


show me where your love lies

by angel_deux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fake Dating except the main couple isn't the one fake dating, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Jaime "saves" Elia by pretending to date her, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, because I'm beginning to realize I don't know how to write anything else!, but don't worry there's plenty of pining and angst, matchmaker cersei, not actually lyanna critical, she's not nearly as incompetent as book cersei, very Rhaegar critical, very show cersei this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-21 11:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20693003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Jaime Lannister agrees to fake-date Elia Martell for several reasons. One is that he wants to protect her after her nasty breakup with her cheating ex. Another is that the girl he likes hasn't been responding to any of his attempts at flirting, and he figures he probably doesn't have a shot.Brienne Tarth, meanwhile, has finally decided to acknowledge the massive crush she has on Jaime. Even if she knows he's just joking, she can still ENJOY his oblivious flirtiness. Except then he starts dating Elia Martell, and everything changes.





	1. making it alone is lonely

**Author's Note:**

> I am being my usual dumb, chaotic self and posting this first chapter before I'm done with the first draft of the whole story, so it's about to be a wild week for me, folks! I could be smart and NOT post once a day, but I think we all know I'm not going to do that.
> 
> Anyway, here's the sort-of Fake Dating AU I've been cooking for you all. I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> Also thank you to QuirkyCinnamon who talked me off the ledge a lil bit on tumblr when I was having a bit of a crisis about the way Jaime's going to be perceived in this!

Jaime Lannister has always liked Elia Martell. That’s not very special; everyone likes Elia Martell. Elia Martell is the nicest person on the planet except _maybe_, Jaime would argue, Brienne Tarth.

It’s possible he’s the only one who would say that. Brienne Tarth’s undeniably nice, but she has her prickly side, mostly born of defensiveness. Elia’s the kind of nice that comes across almost as being fake at first until you’ve spent enough time around her to realize that she’s just _like _that. It’s this sweet obliviousness. Like she doesn’t seem to pick up on cruelty because it never even _occurs _to her that people can be cruel. She’s so naïve. Ever since they were in the fourth grade and Jaime intervened to stop Gregor Clegane from picking on her, he’s felt this absurd protectiveness towards her. This compulsion to help someone so perfectly innocent because she never seems able to help herself.

So when he finds Elia crying in the hallway, her forehead pressed against the door of her locker, _hours_ after school let out, his heart feels like it has been physically stomped on.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

She turns and looks at him. She even looks pretty when she’s crying, which he knows is impressive. His twin sister Cersei is one of the prettiest girls in school, but even _she _looks all blotchy and horrible when she cries. But Elia delicately wipes her eyes and gives a sad little sniffle, and she turns a watery smile in Jaime’s direction that already trembles from the effort. Jaime is aghast. Jaime is furious.

“What did he do?” he asks.

Jaime actually likes Elia's boyfriend, Rhaegar Targaryen. Their fathers have been friends for a long time, apparently. It’s hard to imagine Tywin Lannister actually _having _friends, and he doesn’t even seem to like Aerys, but their families get together for holidays and stuff. Rhaegar has been a little chilly ever since Jaime punched Aerys in the face for drunkenly making a pass at Jaime’s Aunt Genna at a cookout last year, but for the most part he knows that Rhaegar is a nice guy. But something has always bothered Jaime about the distant way Rhaegar treats Elia.

It isn’t that Jaime wants Elia. No, Elia is beautiful and kind, but Jaime is, at heart, a one-woman kind of guy, and his heart is already spoken for even if the big, stubborn idiot doesn’t realize it. But that’s part of his problem with the Rhaegar situation, because he watches Rhaegar blow Elia off or barely listen to her when she talks, and he gets so _irritated_. Like, Rhaegar has no idea what it’s like to want someone who doesn’t seem to want you back. He has no idea how badly it hurts to be the person most invested. Rhaegar has a girl who loves him and wants him and isn’t afraid to show it openly, and he treats her like a minor irritation most days.

“I caught him,” Elia whispers. “With Lyanna Stark.”

Jaime can’t help the expression he makes. Lyanna Stark? The _freshman_ Lyanna Stark? Ned Stark’s little sister? What could they possibly have in common? And it isn’t as if Jaime’s one to talk—pining away as he is for a girl who is widely considered the ugliest girl in school, for some reason—but the idea of Rhaegar cheating on sweet, beautiful Elia with plain, serious Lyanna is just _incomprehensible_.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks. Elia laughs. It’s wetter than a normal laugh, and it shakes a bit.

“That’s very flattering, Jaime,” she says. “But I shouldn’t be surprised. I knew something was different about him. I just didn’t think…I thought he was going to break up with me! I didn’t think he would ever do something like this.”

“He’s an idiot,” Jaime says. “Do you need a ride home?”

Elia’s smile is so relieved that it hurts to look at.

“Could you?” she asks. “I tried calling my brothers, but Doran is at work, and Oberyn _never _has his cell charged.”

“It’s not a problem,” Jaime insists.

* * *

He takes them through the drive-thru of a fast food place on his way to the Martell house. They sit in the parking lot for a while afterward, sharing a large thing of fries and talking about Rhaegar. Jaime doesn’t mind, really, because he knows Elia needs someone to talk to and he likes being useful to people, but she gets embarrassed and hangs her head.

“I’m talking about him too much,” she says. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You haven’t dated anyone since you and Cat broke up.”

Jaime hums his agreement. He and Catelyn Tully dated for nearly two years at the start of high school before they had to acknowledge that they were basically just friends who made out sometimes. So they took make-outs off the table, and Cat moved on to Ned Stark, and they let the friends part stay exactly as it had been. Ned occasionally seems to have some kind of manly, tortured complex about it, but Cat Tully isn’t the sort of person to let her boyfriend dictate the people she has in her life.

“Guess I’m just waiting for the right person to notice me,” Jaime says, letting his laugh turn it into a joke.

“People are always talking about you. About how good-looking you are, and how you’re much nicer than you used to be.” Jaime laughs, which makes Elia laugh too. “There isn’t anyone? Half the girls in the locker room during gym class are scheming about how to snap you up.”

“Can you get me a list?” Jaime jokes. But Elia isn’t deterred. Just steady, unwavering, waiting. She just spent almost an hour talking about Rhaegar and how hurt she is. Baring emotional wounds in a way Jaime doesn’t think he would ever have the strength to do. He can at least give her a glimpse at his own heart in return. “There _is _someone. She’s in the half that isn’t squealing about me in gym locker rooms, though.”

“Do I get to know her name?”

“Not a chance,” Jaime says. “You’d do something absurdly nice like trying to matchmake us, and I’m still in the stage where I’d like to just…quietly freak out about her. I’m not ready to have my friends pull sneaky shit to get us together.”

Elia laughs at him and steals one of his fries, a sly expression coming over her face.

“Not a bad accusation, Jaime Lannister. I love to meddle. At least tell me a little bit.”

Jaime considers, trying to think of a way to describe her without giving it away immediately. It’s a lot harder than he expected.

“She’s…nice,” he says, lamely. Elia groans. “What? She is!”

“That’s not a description! That’s boring! If you really like this girl, you should be able to do better than that.”

“She has the prettiest eyes of anyone I’ve ever seen,” Jaime blurts.

Elia takes another fry. She chews it slowly, still smirking at him.

“So you like Brienne Tarth,” she says finally. Jaime sputters.

“What? How did you…?”

“She has _very _pretty eyes. And she picked you up and carried you off the field last year when you broke your wrist. _I’d _have a crush on her if I was you.”

“You saw that?” Jaime asks.

“I was at the game,” Elia confirms. Jaime doesn’t remember seeing her there, but then again, most of his memory of the time he broke his wrist is consumed either by the pain or by Brienne.

They’d been friendly ever since she was granted permission to join the boy’s soccer team, but he supposes he still saw her the same way everyone else did: big, ugly, boring. She has a low voice and speaks slowly, like she’s considering every word. People aren’t as outright mean to her as they used to be when she moved to Kings Landing in middle school, but they generally still aren’t _kind_. She’s friends with Cat and Ned, which means that Jaime wouldn’t ever be cruel to her even if he wanted to, but being on the same team meant he wouldn’t be mean anyhow; if there’s one thing Jaime believes in, it’s loyalty. He was kind to her. He stood up for her if the other kids were acting cruel. It was nothing groundbreaking. It was barely even friendship. It certainly wasn’t anything more.

Except then one of the kids on the other team—_Hoat_, that fucking prick—slid into the back of Jaime’s legs to knock him down, and then he stood up before Jaime got to his feet and stomped _directly _on Jaime’s wrist, grinding in his heel for good measure. Not that anyone had been able to prove it, since the refs weren’t watching beyond the illegal slide tackle, but Hoat’s eyes had been locked directly on Jaime’s, and Jaime knew it had been on purpose.

So did Brienne.

She appeared out of the horde of players on both sides who were shouting and shoving each other. Coach Selmy was waving his arms around and trying to calm everyone. Arthur Dayne was trying his absolute hardest to maintain control as team captain. Howland Reed was trying to fight past him to get at the ref. But Brienne marched straight up to Hoat, and she stared at him.

That was all she did. Stare. Her lip twitched a little, like she was barely holding back a snarl. She looked at him, her big blue eyes flickering contemptuously over every part of him as if to declare him weak and empty and not very good at soccer. She had a full few inches on him. He couldn’t _help _but quail slightly under her scrutiny, and Jaime saw Brienne sneer in response.

Then she turned her back, and her sneer turned to concern, and she bent down next to where Jaime was still lying on the ground, clutching his wrist.

“Put your arm over my shoulders,” she said gently. “Let’s get you off the field.”

Her voice had been so calm and steady and _warm_, and Jaime had clung to her like a man starved as his wrist ground together and _hurt_. Brienne lifted him to his feet and basically dragged him to the sidelines.

He was taken to the hospital after that, but the game continued. Arthur braved the Lannister home the next day to fill Jaime in on the rest. He said the game had been ready to explode until the final whistle was finally blown, and even then tensions had remained high. Not like Jaime required his team to go all _Warriors_ on the other side, but he was floating just slightly on painkillers, and it made him feel _something _to hear that they were angry on his behalf.

When he said something to that effect, Arthur laughed, and he said, _I haven’t even told you the best part, _and then he told Jaime that Brienne Tarth spent the rest of the match ruthlessly stopping every single attack that Hoat tried to make, even if she had to leave her position to do it. When he lost his cool and yelled at her, she straight-up _head-butted him_.

That was the exact moment Jaime fell in love with her, and she wasn’t even in the _room _with him.

“If you were at the game, you saw her head-butt Hoat, right?” he asks.

“I did! It was amazing.”

“Seven hells. I bet it was. When Arthur told me about it, I think I left my body for a second. Like it sounded so cool I just short-circuited. I don’t think anyone’s ever stood up for me before.”

Not Cersei. Not Tyrion. Not even Aunt Genna, who only gently chided her brother whenever his expectations for Jaime got too noticeably crushing. There were little moments of familial loyalty, sure. But that kind of visceral, physical defense was not something he ever thought he would get from anyone, and he is still, a year later, a bit shaken by it. He’s used to being the one who protects others. He never really thought about what it would feel like to have someone protect _him_.

“She seems very _nice_,” Elia teases. “A bit quiet. She’s not who I imagined you falling for.”

“Me neither, I guess,” Jaime admits. There’s a lot more he could say, but he doesn’t want to say it. Things about how Cat’s the only other person he’s ever really been interested in, and how until that moment on the soccer field he wasn’t even interested in Brienne. Except now she’s the only person he wants. _He _doesn’t even understand it. “But she’s it.”

“She’s taller than you. Is that what it is? Do you like that?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“I’m not trying to tease you, you know. I think it’s sweet. And Cat will be happy to know you’ve moved on.”

“Don’t you _dare _tell Cat. Brienne is her best friend!”

“I know!” Elia says. She’s smirking again, but Jaime trusts her. She takes a long, thoughtful sip of her soda and finally says, “I won’t tell her, but _you _should. She might have advice.”

“I don’t need advice. I just need to be left in peace,” Jaime argues, dramatically, and Elia covers her mouth to laugh.

“Thank you for being so kind to me, Jaime,” she says finally, and Jaime’s heart just _hurts_, and he can’t figure out anything to say, so he nods.

* * *

For most of the next few days, he doesn’t realize what’s happening. He used to be much more involved in all that social politics stuff at school, back before he and Cersei drifted a bit when Jaime joined soccer and Cersei went to volleyball. They still spend most of their afternoons and evenings together watching TV when Cersei isn’t out with her friends, but Cersei’s always gravitated towards the center of social circles, and Jaime found that he generally liked being outside of them. When Jaime was constantly in her orbit, he just sort of absorbed things from Cersei and her friends and the people who always seemed to be _around _for some reason (like Varys or Petyr Baelish, both of whom seemed to be competing for who could get Cersei the best gossip possible). Jaime likes the way things are now. Addam Marbrand is still one of his most loyal friends, and there are Cat and Brienne and his little brother Tyrion. He doesn’t need much as Cersei does to be content, which is the way it’s always been.

But if he was still tapped into Cersei’s network, he would have realized a lot sooner that for some reason the student body has decided to take Rhaegar's _side_.

Not that there are really sides to the whole thing, because Elia doesn’t make a fuss about it and goes about her life while Rhaegar and Lyanna do that thing that the most confusing couples do where they walk side-by-side while _kissing_, like other people aren’t trying to walk down the same narrow hallway. It’s already kind of freaking Jaime out because Lyanna’s a freshman and Rhaegar’s a senior who got held back once so he’s like _nineteen_, but the weirdest thing is that no one seems to _care_.

“They make such a cute couple,” someone says as they walk by Jaime and Cersei at Cersei’s locker.

“Ugh, I know,” their friend says. “He’s so much happier than he used to be.”

“I just don’t get it,” Jaime says once the two gossips are gone. He looks at the couple in question, making their usual show of things down the hall. Rhaegar trying to look all sophisticated and cool as he leans against a locker beside a giggling Lyanna. “He cheated on _Elia Martell_. Everyone likes Elia! Elia’s never done anything wrong in her life! And they’re acting like this is just _fine._”

“Rhaegar’s friends are better at controlling the rumor mill than hers are,” Cersei says, glancing at Rhaegar as she reorganizes her books in her locker, passing the ones she needs for her next class to Jaime. Cersei used to have a crush on Rhaegar—a fact which Jaime and Tyrion have both since teased her for relentlessly—but then he bought an acoustic guitar and started growing his hair out, and Cersei’s irritation overrode her want. “_Someone_ started telling people that Rhaegar dumped her because she _wouldn’t put out_. And then someone _else _started a rumor that she was a total slut and that’s why he dumped her. Men are so fucking simple. And don’t get me started on the girls who think either rumor justifies it. They’re all so easily manipulated.”

“He didn’t dump her at all. He _cheated _on her. Technically, she dumped him for being a cheating scumbag.”

“If only you got there before his PR team.”

“By which you mean Jon Connington.”

“Someone should tell him it’s pathetic. He and Petyr Baelish should start a hopeless losers pining club.” She sends a sly little look in Jaime’s direction, which he answers with a sharp glare. “Or you could start it with them.”

The thing about Cersei is that she spends so much time threatening people and being horrible to people and generally making other people fear for their lives that she forgets to tone it down when she’s with people she actually likes. But Jaime knows she'd keep his secret to the actual, literal grave. Possibly it’s because she’s embarrassed to know her brother has no interest in anyone but Brienne Tarth. But also it’s because he’s her twin, and because the Lannister siblings are good at backing each other up, even if they’re also occasionally a little too good at tearing each other down.

“Can’t you do something about it?” he asks. Cersei smiles a little, plainly pleased to have her expertise acknowledged.

“I could. But you know Elia. She wouldn’t like any schemes for revenge that _I _might come up with.”

And, well. That’s true. Jaime sighs and looks back over at Rhaegar, grimacing. He hates being in the middle of these things. Honor tells him that Elia needs some kind of justice, but Cersei’s right. Elia wouldn’t thank him. She’d rather if everyone moved on and she was allowed to fade into the background.

“I just wish there was something I could do,” he says.

* * *

“I know exactly what you can do to help,” Cersei replies.

Well, it’s not a direct reply. It’s hours later, during lunch, and Cersei’s got Elia’s arm tucked through hers so it only _kind of_ looks like she’s dragging the Martell girl over. Elia looks flushed and horrified and maybe humiliated, and she’s already shaking her head.

“It’s not a good idea,” she says.

“It’s a wonderful idea,” Cersei replies patiently. She nudges Elia to sit down in the seat across from Jaime, and then she slides into the seat beside her. She leans her elbows on the table, looking like some kind of terrifying crime boss. “The two of you will date.”

“What,” Jaime says flatly, looking at Elia. She’s already shaking her head again. He’s never seen her look so embarrassed.

“Our dear Elia needs to date someone with an appropriate level of social capital.”

“Social _capital_? Seven hells, Cersei…”

“She needs to date someone that people like _more _than they like Rhaegar, because otherwise those nasty rumors are going to continue to follow her. _You_, my dear brother, are a complete mystery to the student body, which means that you have made people want you. You’re the best possible person for her to date. Elia doesn’t want to _actually _date anyone. She wants to be left alone. And you don’t want to date _her_. You want to protect her. Think of it as being like her bodyguard. You just have to hold hands sometimes. Press a few kisses to her cheek. Let me spread the story. It will make the rumors go away, and we can control the narrative. Right now, Jon Connington has made it seem as though Elia is both bitter and grieving, and moving on with _Jaime Lannister _of all people will be wonderful for her image. Elia agrees with me.”

“Hypothetically,” Elia squeaks, covering her face. “I didn’t think she’d actually insist that we do it! I just told her it would be a good idea _hypothetically_!”

“And I know that you think it’s not weird that you haven’t dated anyone in two years, but you’re _my _brother, Jaime. You really should at least be seen with someone. If you won’t make a move on you-know-who, then you can at least put in a good showing with Elia. Maybe it will even make her jealous.”

Jaime, who really is the absolute worst at keeping things cool when he has feelings for people, can’t help but cut his eyes in the direction of the table where Brienne sits beside Cat, rolling her eyes at something Ned is saying while Howland Reed laughs loudly. Sometimes he just has to _look _at her and see if she still makes his stomach swoop with want.

And. Yep. She does.

“She won’t be jealous,” he says.

“Of course she will be,” Elia says. Cersei grins a little, apparently glad that yet another person knows about his Brienne Problem.

“She’ll be _beside _herself,” she says. “And you’ll finally understand that the shy, ugly girl is _never _going to make the first move, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t in love with you.” To Elia, she says, “maybe you can talk some sense into him. But not for a month.”

“A _month_?” Elia asks.

“At least. I’d advise you keep this going until the end of the school year, but I have a feeling one of you is going to crack before then. By the time we graduate, no one’s going to care half as much about any of this as they do right now, and you’ll be back in Dorne for university while Jaime follows his heart and their soccer scholarship to the Stormlands to stare in her general direction for another four years. This is about protecting yourself _now_.”

Jaime looks at Elia, and he sees the way she has her fists clenched in her lap. She’s not just embarrassed, and she’s not just sad. She’s _terrified_. And he knows that it’s not just because of this. He’s heard the things that people have been saying about her. The rumors that make her out to be a frigid prude or an insatiable nympho. The rumors that say she smashed in Rhaegar’s car window with a tire iron and the other ones that say she poked holes in his condoms to try and trap him. All these stories that paint her as some “crazy Dornish girl” stereotype because everyone’s willing to believe the worst of her and the best of Rhaegar just because she’s too _nice _to fight the kind of rumors that Jon Connington is willing to start on his best friend’s behalf.

“I’d be willing to do it if you are,” he says. Elia’s eyes dart to his immediately, and she looks so confused and hopeful and grateful.

“Really?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says, determination mounting. “Let’s do it.”


	2. you can call it anything, but that was love

The day Elia Martell and Jaime Lannister start dating is like two days after Brienne Tarth has finally decided to self-acknowledge the massive crush she has on Jaime, so that kind of sucks.

She had avoided calling it a _crush_ before. Jaime’s always just _been_ there, and in the last two years he finally hit that growth spurt that his twin sister Cersei hit ages ago. He’s taller than Cersei now—he’s only about an inch and a half shorter than _Brienne _at this point—and he has taken up boxing in addition to soccer to strengthen his wrist after that injury last year. Which made him start wearing way too many tank tops to soccer practice because he knows exactly what his arms look like now.

He’s had a supporting role in Brienne’s life since she moved here in middle school. First he was That Asshole Lannister Kid who mocked her for her height and her looks, and then he was her soccer teammate and still occasional asshole but in a more general way. But this year, senior year, he has graduated to Chemistry Partner, which has taken him out of the Annoyance category and put him instead in the category of Ally. They’d been friendly enough since she was allowed on the boy’s high school soccer team, because Jaime is the kind of person who’s automatically in your corner when you join any kind of team with him. This kind of overblown dedication to team loyalty. But this year is the first time they’ve been actual _friends_, and so now the fact that he’s gotten super hot is just...in her face. All the time. And they’re going to the same school next year, so she’s going to have to _keep dealing with it._

Brienne has always been ugly. She kept hoping that she would undergo some summertime transformation like Cersei Lannister and Lysa Tully both did. Going home at the end of one school year looking awkward and out of place, and then returning at the start of the next one somehow having become absolutely gorgeous. But, no. That seems not to be her fate. _She_ seems fated to grow a half inch every couple of weeks, leaving even Jaime, the tallest boy in their class, trailing behind. She’s never gotten less ugly, and that seems like the kind of thing that probably sorts itself out by the time you reach your last year of high school. She probably missed the last train in terms of miraculous genetic makeovers.

So the Elia Martell thing. It isn’t like Brienne thought she had a _chance_ with Jaime Lannister. He’s just a natural flirt, and it made her start to feel things quite out of nowhere. Either he was getting more intense or she was just getting more sensitive to it, because suddenly simple things like passing her a copy of the chemistry test seemed to involve long periods of eye contact and his fingers grazing gently over hers. And he developed this distressing habit of lifting the bottom of his shirt to wipe his face. He’d done it from time to time during soccer—hell, she did her own fair share of it during soccer— but suddenly it was like he did it _all the time_. Like he had this compulsion to flash his abs at everyone. In chemistry class. In the hallway. During lunch period. It’s _unbearable. _

It doesn’t help that they’ve been spending so much more time together lately. After Hoat stomped on his wrist last year, Jaime had to stop playing for so long that when he came back he was a bit rusty. He wanted extra practice with someone who wouldn’t mock him for it, and so he asked Brienne to help him. Long after soccer practice was technically over, Brienne and Jaime would stay on the field, running drills until they were both sweating (and both doing the torturous shirt face wipe thing), and Jaime seemed to hone in on some kind of weaponized charm. Flirting aggressively, finding reasons to pin her to the ground (or reasons for her to pin _him_), teasing her and touching her and laughing with her.

It has been fucking _torture_. Bad enough that his jaw has gotten all chiseled and his smile extra sharp and beautiful. Bad enough that his braces freshman year led to perfect teeth and that he’s now experimenting with longer hair so he’s got this horrible, artful tumble of blonde hair down to his jaw. Bad enough even just that his eyes are green! _Green_! Brienne’s ugly. She’s not _dead_. She’s also mostly straight and into the exact type of person Jaime Lannister is growing up to be, and the fact that he has started being _nice_ to her was the last straw before she was forced to acknowledge the full-blown intensity of the crush.

So yes, she decided, two days before he started dating someone for the first time in two years. _Yes, I like him. Yes, I want to kiss him. I want to fuck him. I want to make him so weak with pleasure that he can’t stand on his own two feet_. That stuff was already well established, hormonally. She knew that. But she also had to acknowledge the softer stuff. _I want him to look up at me and stand on his toes to kiss me on the cheek. I want him to hold my hand under our chemistry table. I want to run my fingers through his hair. I want to hug him. I want to cheer him up when he gets in a fight with Cersei. I want to help him get better grades in his classes because I know he’s self-conscious about it._ Just an endless list of torturously soft shit that went so far beyond the baseline _wanting_ she was used to.

She was hopelessly into and about as far in love with Jaime Lannister as a person could get when a love was doomed to be unrequited. It’s worse than her long-ago thing for Ronnet Connington, who broke her heart by being the first cute boy to call her ugly to her face in the third grade. It’s worse than any crush she’s ever had before, and she finally acknowledges it for what it is and determines to at least _enjoy_ how obliviously flirty and sweet he can be. Absorb the affection as if it’s the same type of affection she wants from him. It’s something, at least.

And then he walks into school holding hands with Elia Martell, and, well. That’s _that_ crush demolished.

* * *

The really absurd thing is that she reacts as if she _did_ think she had a chance. Which she didn’t! She absolutely _knew_ that Jaime Lannister’s flirtations were surface only and either entirely involuntary or just the sort of baseline flirting that he did, as a flirty person. She told herself very sternly, over and over again, that she was _not_ to get her hopes up, because it obviously meant nothing, because no boy as hot as Jaime Lannister would ever look at her gargantuan frame and her mashed-together Picasso face and think “yeah, that’s the one for me”.

She was supposed to be the smart girl if she couldn’t be the pretty girl or the mysterious girl or the cool girl, and instead she turns out to be the hopeless girl who secretly, deep inside herself, thought that there was a chance, and now finds herself grieving as if she has actually _lost_ something. Like the kind of grieving that girls do when their celebrity crushes get married even though they knew very well there had never been a chance with them

The whole school won’t shut up about it, too. Despite her recent fall from grace, Elia Martell is basically the princess of King’s Landing. She’s not mean like Cersei Lannister can be, and she’s not extremely outgoing and well liked like Catelyn Tully. She’s quiet and frequently ill and extremely frail in a lot of ways, but she’s _nice_. There’s a sweetness to every word she says. She’s always the lead in the school play, chosen over louder and more demonstrative performers, because she brings a raw emotion to everything. She plays the violin in band, only because the harp, her _real_ instrument, is too unwieldly for a high school stage. She’s idolized by her brothers and she’s loved by her classmates, and to see her hand-in-hand with Jaime Lannister is an acute type of agony, because she looks like she _belongs_ with him. He bends down to kiss her on the cheek before he deposits her at her first class, and she blushes and smiles up at him, and he doesn’t have to go up on her toes to reach her, because she’s small and delicate and _perfect_.

Brienne bemoans this horrifying turn of events for exactly two class periods and one lunch period. She sits with Cat and Ned and Howland, like she always does. They talk about their upcoming history test. They talk about last week’s football game. Catelyn does her usual mothering routine with Brienne, trying to talk her into taking off her hoodie and showing off her arms, and then settling for brushing Brienne’s hair out of her eyes and pinning it back with a bobby pin she’s pulled from somewhere in her bag. Brienne allows herself this brief grieving period, and then she squares her shoulders and goes to chemistry class, and she marches up to where Elia Martell is standing at her usual table with her partner, Hyle Hunt.

“Elia,” Brienne says. Her voice sounds too high and fake, the way it sounds when she talks to her father’s friends or the people on the intercom at the drive-thru. She tries to control it a little. “I was just wondering if you would want to switch partners with me.”

Elia blinks at her, uncomprehending, and then she begins to blush prettily. Nothing blotchy about _her. _Her tan skin goes just slightly rosy at the cheeks. It’s adorable. Brienne wants to cry, just a bit.

“Oh!” Elia exclaims. “Oh, because you’re usually with Jaime! That’s very sweet of you, Brienne. But are you sure you wouldn’t mind?”

“No, of course not. You two should work together.” Brienne smiles her best smile, and she thinks she might pull it off. Elia hesitates for only a few more moments before she piles her things and then moves them over to the desk that Brienne used to share with Jaime. She gives Brienne another grateful little grin before she goes, and Brienne feels like everyone’s eyes are on her, even though the only person she can see looking is Lyanna Stark.

She sits down next to Hyle and smiles at him. He smiles back. Definitely a downgrade, but she feels good enough about herself for being so self-sacrificial about all this that she manages to make the downgrade feel like it’s actually kind of an upgrade.

Jaime’s footsteps stutter slightly as he enters the room, and Brienne offers him up a friendly smile, and she gives him a subtle thumbs up, like _congratulations on the hot new girlfriend_, she supposes. She hates herself for the gesture immediately. Jaime doesn’t return it, just looks vaguely quizzically at Elia and then heads to his desk.

“His loss,” Hyle says quietly to Brienne, leaning a little closer than she would like. “Elia’s not very good at chemistry.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Hyle,” Brienne replies a bit conspiratorially. Maybe she can make a friend out of this, if nothing else. “Neither am I.”

* * *

It was a good idea to switch partners with Jaime in chemistry, because it showed the literal zero other people who know about her crush on Jaime that she is capable of being an Adult about this. And she luckily doesn’t find herself grinding her teeth with jealousy or mournfully staring at their bent heads as they presumably hold hands under the chemistry table and send cute little loaded glances to each other as Ms. Tyrell goes on and on about whatever the lesson today is meant to be. She looks back once, and she sees Jaime and Elia puzzling over something, and that’s it. That’s all she needs. A final glance.

Hyle claims too much of her attention for her to be dramatic for too long. He actually _is _very good at chemistry, and Brienne feels odd, taking a backseat, being the worse partner for once. He explains everything in a very pleasant voice, making sure she understands without making her feel stupid about it, and she’s pleased. It was a good choice to switch. It’ll help her grade, and Jaime and Elia both think she did a very nice, selfless thing.

Before she leaves class for the day, Hyle smiles at her, so that’s nice too. Maybe hanging out with an average-looking person will be good for her. It won’t make quite as many hits on her self-esteem, at least.

* * *

She can’t think of a way to get out of extra practice with Jaime without being a total ass about it, so she stays late the same way she always does.

“Why’d you switch in chemistry?” Jaime asks when he finally wanders over to her. The sun is already heading well towards set, and the lights on the soccer field are blinding. Jaime’s all sweat-covered and breathing hard from the end of practice, and he does that thing with the shirt, but Brienne looks away, feeling a twinge of guilt. He’s a _taken man _now. She shouldn’t pretend not to stare at his abs. She should just actually not stare at them.

“I thought it would be nice for you and Elia to work together,” she says. She rolls the ball around with the tip of her cleat. She feels like she could run through three more practices after this one. Her energy is so fucking pent up from _not _watching Jaime.

“That’s what she said,” Jaime says thoughtfully, and Brienne frowns in his direction. His hair is mussed and adorable, and he’s rotating his wrist the way he does when it’s secretly bothering him, because it still pains him sometimes.

“Well,” Brienne says, finding herself defensive even though she knows that’s going to be even more obvious. “That’s because it’s the truth. Are we going to run drills or what?”

It isn’t Jaime who’s different. That’s actually part of the problem. He still has that low, deep chuckle. He still grazes her hip and her back and her shoulders with his hands when he brushes past her too close. He still says shocking, lewd things to make her blush. It’s exactly as he acted _before _he got a girlfriend, and it just drives the whole miserable thing deeper. _See? He was never really flirting. He doesn’t think anything should change because to him, this means nothing!_

Brienne’s the one who’s different, and she knows it, and she’s miserable because she can tell almost immediately that Jaime picks up on it, too. She’s stiff. She goes all frozen and wounded whenever he touches her. She starts actively avoiding his touch. She rolls her eyes and doesn’t laugh or respond to any of the dirty things he says. Jaime’s obviously frustrated by the end.

“Are you going to be this weird from now on?” he asks. “Just because of Elia?”

Brienne literally jerks back like he’s _slapped _her, and she can see this remorseful sort of panic come over his face, like he wants to take it back.

“I’m not being weird,” she says. “I’m being normal! _You’re _being weird!”

Jaime’s face goes even more flat and incredulous, and Brienne thinks of about a million things to say that are all _much _too telling, because she just keeps coming back to the fact that it’s probably not weird at all. She’s the one who for _weeks _has probably been reading too much into it because she’s an ugly idiot who responds to the barest kindnesses by falling in love with people.

“It might not seem it to you,” she manages to say. “But it _looks_ bad. And I don’t want it to.”

Jaime glowers at her, but at least now he looks like _he _is on the defensive.

“Why would it _look _bad?” he asks.

“Because you have a girlfriend! And I know you’re just…you’re just being you. And I know it doesn’t mean anything. But if someone was watching.”

“No one’s watching, and _Brienne_, you can’t…”

“They could be! And it would either look like you were flirting to them, or it would look like you were fucking with me as a joke.”

Jaime’s protests die on his lips, and he frowns mightily.

“Why would I do that?” he asks.

“People do that.”

“No they don’t. What people?”

Brienne thinks of Ron Connington, laughing with his friends.

“People,” she says weakly. “All right? I know you’re not doing that. But people…”

“Brienne, I’m not _trying _to upset you,” Jaime says, sounding very adult and reasonable and flat, so flat and emotionless, and Brienne swallows back her own rising panic because she cannot be the one to lose her shit. It would be too embarrassing.

“I know you aren’t,” she says. “You _aren’t _upsetting me. I’m just saying. It just can’t be the way it was before.”

* * *

There’s of course the temptation to listen to some sad, pathetic music on the way home, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t even listen to sad music while she does her homework. She listens to aggressively upbeat synthpop instead, and she does her homework in record time, and she eats dinner with her father, and then they watch a bad horror movie together before bed. Everything exactly the same as it always is. That Jaime-shaped shadow in the back of her mind can be completely ignored.

Lying in bed is always a risk, and this is no exception, because then she’s forced to stare at the ceiling and think about him, and how cute he looked with Elia, and how things are going to have to be different now whether he realizes it or not.

She thinks she might be angry with him for forcing the issue during practice. Why can’t he just be like her? Quietly accepting that things are different and moving on with his life? Why is he always _pushing _her? She doesn’t think that he was trying to upset her on purpose, but he should at least understand that she _was _upset and that he _should _drop it. Not poke and prod all the bruises she’s doing her best to try and hide.

* * *

Like most things, time makes it easier. Jaime and Elia continue to be inoffensively cute in the hallways. Jaime continues to be bad at chemistry, but at least he gets to do it with his girlfriend. He continues to demand extra soccer practice, and he’s irritatingly stiff and formal with her but she’s stubborn and refuses to snap at him and say something like “you know I didn’t mean _this_, you idiot”, because he’s trying to get a rise out of her and she is very good at not giving in.

After the first week of _dealing with it_, Brienne spots her opportunity to make things even easier for herself. She's just ducked inside to use the bathroom after practice, shouting to Jaime that she’ll be right back, and she finds Elia waiting in the school lobby, homework spread out in front of her. Jaime’s girlfriend smiles when she sees Brienne. She uses one hand to push a curtain of brown hair out of her eyes. She looks absurdly cute doing it.

“Oh, hi,” she says. “I’m just waiting for Jaime.”

“Is he your ride home?” Brienne asks. Then she feels like an idiot because she remembers that Elia used to have to get a ride home from her last boyfriend, Rhaegar Targaryen. Her brothers both have jobs, and it’s no surprise Elia doesn’t want to take the bus. But then Rhaegar cheated on her with Lyanna Stark, and then there was that whole big blow-up, and now she must rely on Jaime. It’s already well after four-thirty in the afternoon, and she and Jaime usually spend at least an extra hour together. Brienne feels like a total jerk for not realizing.

“Don’t worry about it!” Elia says sweetly. “I can get all my homework done.”

She says it like she doesn’t mind, and maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she’s too nice to mind. _Brienne _would mind, in her position.

“Don’t be silly,” Brienne says, already heading back towards the door to the practice field. “Jaime doesn’t need the help anymore anyway. He’s back in form.”

Which is true. She only didn’t suggest stopping extra practice before because it’s not like _she _has anything better to do. But if Jaime’s driving Elia home and making her wait the extra time…

Brienne briefly thinks she wouldn’t put up with that if she were Elia, but that’s a joke. She probably would. For Jaime? She thinks she might put up with a lot worse for Jaime.

She strides up to him as he’s in the middle of taking off his _entire _shirt to wipe at his face, and she’s suddenly like 'thank the _gods_ for Elia, because this would ruin me completely'.

“Don’t be a dick,” she says. “Your girlfriend's waiting for you.”

“We have practice,” Jaime says, confused, endearing and scrunchy-faced, and she wants to grab one fistful of that fucking hair and kiss him _endlessly_, but instead she scoffs and steals the ball he was holding under one cleat.

“We _had _practice,” she says. “Go drive your girlfriend home. You’re back in form and you know it.”

“She can get all her homework done,” Jaime protests, trying to take the ball back while struggling back into his shirt. Brienne trips him, and he lands on his back with an audible _oof_.

“She wants to spend time with you, idiot,” Brienne insists.

“Oh, _I'm _the idiot?” Jaime scoffs.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, you’re supposed to be- hey!”

Brienne grins and taps the ball in his direction again, sending it bouncing off his hip and back to her waiting foot. Anything to get him to stop saying whatever he was about to say.

“You’re supposed to be the smart one!” he finishes.

“Well, you do set a high bar,” Brienne drawls, and Jaime laughs, still on his back, still with his shirt riding up. Brienne doesn’t look. Jaime’s eyes are too intent on hers. He would see, if she looked. If she allowed her eyes to dart even for a _second_ in that direction.

“Come on,” he says. “Help me up.”

She knows what he’s going to try to do, because he always tries to do it. And this time is no exception. She bends down and offers him a hand, and he tries to overbalance her, yank her off her feet and onto the ground beside him. But as always she keeps her footing, and she hauls Jaime to his feet despite the fact that he’s basically dangling off her arm. He laughs loudly, the way he always does.

“How do you _do _that?” he asks. “Seven hells, you’re like a wall.”

_Yes_, she remembers, with Jaime all fluttery-eyelashed and seemingly charmed, so close to her, still hanging onto her hand, his other arm still wrapped around hers from when he tried to pull her. _Yes, I’m a wall. Big Brienne, bigger than the tallest boy in school. Big, ugly, unlovable Brienne Tarth, who hopelessly crushes on only the most unattainable of men. What a fucking joke._

She sighs, and she detaches herself gently from Jaime.

“Go spend time with Elia,” she says. “Seriously, it isn’t safe for her to be the only one out there, and you don’t need the extra practice.”

“What about you?” Jaime asks. Brienne flops a hand, attempting to look cavalier about it.

“I’ll clean up,” she says.

“I mean if it’s not safe for Elia to be here alone, it’s not safe for you,” Jaime insists. Brienne laughs, and she looks back over her shoulder at him. Jaime’s all pink-cheeked and adorable, watching her. Rumpled still from attempting to pull her down beside him.

“People don’t mess with Big Brienne,” she points out, trying to make the painful nickname sound like a strength. Jaime frowns at her, but Brienne goes back to picking up the extra practice balls that Coach Selmy has been letting them keep out afterwards.

“Just to be clear,” Jaime says from behind her, his voice very tight and careful. “This is over? You’re saying no more practice.”

_Not unless you tell Elia to find another ride home, _Brienne thinks. She hates that bitchy inner voice _immediately_.

Aloud, she says, “you don’t need it anymore, Jaime,” and she doesn’t turn back around. When she finally hears his car leaving the parking lot, she unpacks one of the practice balls and runs some drills on her own, just to get rid of the energy that won’t stop swirling through her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just imagine Elia this whole chapter screaming internally like "no wait, stop, this is the opposite of what I want!! I'm lowkey trying to set you and Jaime up!!"


	3. I believe with my whole heart that this is real

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if Brienne's POV last chapter was a deep dive into High School Angel's Insecurities, this Jaime one is a big ol' glimpse of Angel's Anxiety. I hope I captured it well enough that Jaime doesn't come off as a total flake and instead comes off as Scared Lad, because that's what I was aiming for!!
> 
> Also, as a good example, I've remembered that I have shit I gotta do today, so I'm posting this after doing only 4 edits instead of my customary 5, and you would think from the way my brain has reacted to this idea that I just scrawled it on a napkin drunk at a bar and then scanned it and posted it.

The best thing about fake-dating Elia Martell is that it’s nice having the excuse to hang out with Elia Martell a lot. She’s funny and sweet and she knows exactly how to make Jaime feel better when he’s in a terrible mood. She’s already his biggest cheerleader, insisting that he has a chance with Brienne and trying to get him to see it. She would probably be a really great _real _girlfriend, if he was interested. It makes him even angrier about the whole Rhaegar thing.

The worst thing about fake-dating Elia Martell is that Brienne has erected a wall around herself. It’s like ten feet high. It’s made of solid steel. It’s fucking _electrified_.

_It looks bad_, she had said about his flirting, and since she said it, she has been a completely different person. Like if she had turned to him in class one day and said “I’ve decided to become a Septa”, he would be _less _concerned for his hopes of one day being the future Mr. Jaime Lannister-Tarth.

It’s not even like she was mean about it. That would be one thing. Or _firm _about it, even. Like if she sat him down and explained to him that she’s uncomfortable with the way he talks to her and she doesn’t want him to do it anymore, he would know for sure. He would understand that. He would respect that. He would despair about that and feel like a guilty idiot for not noticing sooner that she doesn’t like his stupid flirting, and he would definitely draw a big red line through all those future hopes and possibly transfer to another college out of humiliation and regret, but he would _get it_, at least. This, this weird blank thing she does where she looks at and talks to him but with _nothing _behind it that used to be there, it’s agonizing. He doesn’t know how to react to it. He just wants her to tell him what to _do_. Does she still want to hang out with him? Does she want him to stop talking to her? They’d talked about getting an apartment together next year at Stormlands. Does she not want to do that anymore?

_It looks bad_, she had said, and he felt like an idiot for not realizing sooner that no matter _what _her feelings for him, or his for her, he should have stopped trying to flirt with her after he supposedly got a girlfriend. Or that maybe he should have thought things through a little bit before accepting this plan to help Elia to begin with. Or that he should have just _told _Brienne when she mentioned it instead of panicking and pulling back and acting weird around her for the rest of the week. It was very _Jaime _of him not to consider the consequences. When Cersei said that Brienne would be jealous, Jaime hadn’t believed her, but he should have realized that _some _things would have to change, at least for the next month.

He’s driving himself mad already.

_It looks bad._ Not that she didn’t like it. Not that she didn’t want him to do it. But she also didn’t say that she _did _like it, and it’s not like she ever tried to _return _it.

Before, when he wasn’t sure about her, he always worried that she was just too nice for him. He knew that she liked spending time with him, because she wouldn’t if she didn’t. She’s nice, but she’s not the kind of nice that would just go on quietly enduring his presence or his occasional strings of text messages if she didn’t genuinely enjoy being around him. But the flirting. It was always hard to tell how she felt about that.

And even if she _doesn’t _mind the flirting. He knows she likes the way he looks. He’s seen her checking him out sometimes. But that’s just…surface stuff. She can like the way he looks and she can like his occasional flirtiness, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t think he’s annoying or too needy or too stupid for her. It doesn’t mean that she wants him beyond how most people seem to want him. It doesn’t mean she wants him the way _he _wants _her. _

Even just in the first few days after starting to fake-date Elia, Jaime waffles back and forth between thinking her refusal of his flirtations now is a good sign, a bad sign, or no sign at all. If she knew it was flirting and never responded and now is telling him to knock it off because it looks bad, then that means she didn’t like it, was looking for an excuse to ask him to stop, and sees this as her opportunity. Unless it means she _did _like it, and now the reason she avoids him the way she does is because it hurt when he started dating Elia instead of making the move that Cersei has repeatedly insisted he has to make.

The easiest thing to do would be to talk to someone about it, but he would normally go to Cat or Brienne with something like this. Addam certainly won’t be any help. And it seems natural to go to Elia, but Elia already asks him like twice a day if he’s _sure _he wants to keep helping her out because she’s convinced it’s _holding him back_, and he really does want to see this through. People are already starting to smile again at Elia in the halls, feeling less weird about her now that she’s dating someone and not assumed to be some tragic scorned woman. It’s shitty and terrible and Jaime hates that it’s working because it says shitty and terrible things about the student body that he should have realized were true before this, and it all makes him feel vaguely guilty, but at least he’s doing _something_, even if it’s less than he would wish.

* * *

One of the worst parts is that Brienne has excised herself so effortlessly from every aspect of his life, and he can’t help but feel _scorned _because of it. First there was chemistry, and then there were fewer text messages, and then there was the extra soccer practice that used to be the favorite part of his day. He thought it was Brienne’s too. She always seemed to have fun, and whenever one or the other of them couldn’t make it, she always seemed sad about it. But then she ended it, swiftly cutting that particular cord, just telling him that he didn’t _need _it anymore, and that sent him into something of a spiral of self-doubt.

Had she only been doing it because he _did _need it before? Was it never fun for her? Was he enjoying himself while she was just doing it out of some obligation, or because she’s a better friend than he deserves? If she was enjoying it as much as he had been, wouldn’t it have been more difficult for her?

He still _sees _her. He still talks to her in the hall, and he still sits beside her in English class, and he still has soccer practice and their games, where they work as effortlessly together as they always have. They still sit together on the bus when they ride to away games and they each wear one earbud to listen to podcasts. But it’s _different_.

One day after practice, he jogs to catch up to her. She lifts up her tank top to wipe at her face, and he really desperately hopes she doesn’t notice the way he can’t stop staring at her stomach. Like, she has _abs_. She’s more built than half the guys on the team. What’s he supposed to do: _not _find it insanely hot? He doesn’t get why no one else is freaking out over her.

“Brienne,” he finally says, and she pulls her shirt back down, looking over at him with concern.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“What? Nothing. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh,” she says. She looks confused, like there’s nothing she can think of that they might have to talk about, and it makes Jaime feel…small. And not in the good, thrilling way that standing next to her usually _does _make him feel small, like she could crush him if she wanted but he knows she never would because he trusts her. But in the way where he has been so afraid that he has built up this friendship between them in his head and now it feels like _proof _that he was right. Like she doesn’t feel the absence of him in her life the same way he does. Like she’s just…_fine_ with things the way they are. She’s fine not hanging out with him as much, and meanwhile he’s been feeling like he’s _drowning_. 

“What did you want to talk about?” she asks.

“I’m sorry,” he says, taking a shot in the dark. “For the way I acted the other day. You’ve seemed weird since then, and I really didn’t mean to…I don’t really know how to do this. Apologize to people. I don’t know if I hurt you or if I made you angry or…”

“You didn’t,” she says, quickly. “It’s fine, Jaime.”

“But we used to be a lot closer than this. And please don’t say it’s because of Elia. I would never want that to come between us. I didn’t mean for it to. And, look, it’s not like she’s the jealous girlfriend type. Cat and I went to the mall yesterday for like six hours and she didn’t mind.”

“Jaime…” Brienne sighs, and he wonders if she has any idea how much it hurts when she’s dismissive like that. Probably not; he doesn’t think Brienne Tarth would be hurtful or mean to anyone on purpose, especially not him. She always hates it when his father or Cersei talk to him like he’s worthless in her presence. She doesn’t know _all _of his insecurities, thank the gods, but she knows some of them.

“I just don’t want this to change things,” he says.

“It _does_, though,” she replies. Solid and steady and _Brienne_. Not angry or blaming him or even being weird about it at all. Just _saying_: things will have to be different now. Things will have to change.

“It shouldn’t,” he says. Brienne sighs.

“Maybe not,” she admits. “But it just _does _for me.” She hesitates, looking him over, finally squaring her shoulders to face him fully. “Look at me.”

“I am.”

“I mean really, _really _look. And don’t look at me as your friend. Look at me as a stranger would, like you’d never met me before.”

“But I have met you before. You _are _my friend. Maybe my best friend aside from Tyrion. And maybe Cat. I guess Cersei, sometimes.”

“Addam?”

“Addam’s fine, but he’s not you.”

Brienne smiles a little, like she can’t help it.

“Use your imagination, Jaime,” she says, almost fondly.

“What exactly am I mean to be looking at?” he asks.

“I’m ugly.”

He rears back.

“_What_?” he asks. It’s the way she’s said it. Like it’s just a _known fact_. He knows that people think she is, and he figured from his own reactions to the things that people say about him that it was probably hard for her to brush those things off. But he didn’t know she believed it so _fully_. Like it’s just a part of her, wearing this mantle of ugliness that he doesn’t think she deserves.

“I’m ugly,” she says again. Patient, like she’s waiting for him to catch up to where she’s always been. “And when people look at the two of us, do you know what they see?” He doesn’t bother to guess, because he knows he isn’t going to guess whatever it is that she thinks is the truth. “They see an ugly girl following around a guy who looks like _you_. And most of the time, that’s fine. I’m used to that. They probably assume I have this massive unrequited crush on you, because that’s how these things work. Ugly girls like me want beautiful things they can’t have.”

“Stop calling yourself that,” he says weakly, but she just rolls her eyes at him.

“Why? That’s what I am. I’m…”

“You’re _not_, though. I don’t think you are.”

“You used to.”

“Well, yeah, but I was an idiot, and I didn’t know you back then.”

“Jaime, you’re being sweet, but it’s not the point,” she says. Still so patient. She’s not even _listening _to him.

“Maybe it’s not your point, but it’s mine. You’re saying that people are going to think you’re pathetically mooning after me even though I have a girlfriend now, right? That they’re going to think it’s like some big joke?”

“They _will_.”

“And I’m saying that I don’t see that. I don’t see you like that. I look at you and I see one of my best friends, and I see that you’re pulling away from me because you think _other people _will think you’re something you’re not.”

He didn’t start this conversation angry, but he finds now that he’s in danger of _finishing _it angry. He’s supposed to be apologizing for making her uncomfortable, but it turns out that she’s not uncomfortable at all. She just doesn’t want to come off as pathetic. She’s afraid that she will, and she’s afraid that people will judge her. It’s not that he doesn’t understand her want to avoid that, but…again he feels small and hurt and _pointless_, because he would do anything to keep her, and she’s okay with writing him off completely. On the scale of things of importance in her life, he’s below the opinions of the people who will never understand how amazing she is, and it hurts. Their opinions are worth more than their friendship, to her. More than _him_.

“That’s not what I meant,” she says, seeming startled, looking at him like _he’s _the one being hurtful.

“But it is! How would you feel if I said I didn’t want to hang out with you anymore because you embarrass me?”

“That’s _not what I’m saying_, Jaime!”

“You’re embarrassed to be seen with me,” he points out. “Does the ‘why’ really matter that much?”

“Yes! It does! Because you don’t understand!”

“So explain it to me!”

“I can’t.” Brienne deflates suddenly. “I can’t, Jaime. You don’t…you’ve never been ugly a day in your life.”

“I had braces for…”

“_Braces_.” She rolls her eyes. He’s losing her again. He reaches out, and she stills, going utterly frozen as he takes her arm in his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t want to fight with you. I don’t know if I do understand. But I don’t think you’re ugly. I don’t. I’ll tell you literally every day if you need me to. I think you’re wonderful. I don’t want to lose you because of this.”

“Lose me?” Brienne repeats, quiet and almost _confused_, like it hadn’t even occurred to her that he might be worried about that. “You won’t. I’m still…”

“Willing to talk to me when we’re not in public?” Jaime asks, pointed. “I don’t have many friends, Brienne. It kind of feels like a loss.”

“I didn’t realize that you were so…that you were serious. When you said I was one of your only friends.”

“Maybe my best friend,” Jaime says ruefully. It feels more pathetic now.

“Yes, except for several exceptions.”

“Well, it’s sort of on a day-to-day basis. But you’re up there. It would kill me if this changed just because you think it matters what other people think.”

Brienne sighs, and she looks down at the ground, and she shakes her head.

“All right,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to be…I’ll try not to be so weird about it, all right?”

Jaime could hug her. Jaime wants to kiss her. On the cheek, at least. It would for sure be a weird thing to do. High schoolers don’t kiss each other on cheeks, do they? Well Cersei and her Myrish friend Taena do, but he’s pretty sure they’re secretly dating and also Taena’s _Myrish_, so.

He doesn’t hug Brienne. He doesn’t kiss her. He only smiles at her.

“Thank you,” he says. It definitely doesn’t solve anything. It feels more like borrowed time than anything else. But at least it’s something.

* * *

Later, when he gets home, he finds his siblings both lounging on the couch in the living room. Cersei’s got a heating pad and a bowl of popcorn with chocolate candies poured liberally in, and Jaime knows what _that _means. So does Tyrion, apparently, because they’re watching some political romance drama and not whatever documentary Tyrion would probably choose. They both wave a little as Jaime enters the room, and Tyrion scoots to the side a bit so Jaime can flop in between them. Cersei, humming like a particularly pleased housecat, moves her pillow into Jaime’s lap so she can rest her head there.

“I need to talk about Brienne,” Jaime says. Tyrion sighs and pauses the movie. Cersei laughs quietly.

“I knew it,” she says.

“Quite the prophet,” Tyrion drawls. “Who could have ever foreseen that our beloved brother would want to talk about _Brienne the Beauty_.”

“Don’t be a dick about this,” Jaime warns. “And don’t call her that.”

“It isn’t _my _nickname,” Tyrion points out. “Bronn says it’s what they call her.”

“They _who_?”

“Don’t tell him that,” Cersei sighs, sitting back up. “He’ll try to take on half the student body on his own, and father won’t like the hospital bills if he does.”

“Father can fuck himself,” Jaime says, very bravely, knowing that his father is still at work. “Are people calling her that?”

“Of course they are,” Tyrion replies. It’s almost, but not quite, kind of gentle. “She’s big and ugly and unbearably sweet-natured. Who better to make fun of?”

“She isn’t…”

“Seven hells, Jaime,” Cersei sighs. “She _is _big. She _is _ugly. Your preferences don’t change that. People are going to keep saying horrible things about her because it’s easy and because she doesn’t fight back. It’s just like with Elia Martell. They’re very simple, our classmates. They don’t strike for difficult targets because that isn’t any fun. You can’t run off and beat every one of them into submission for being cruel. You can try your best to change the narrative, but it’s just the way things are. It’s the way things have always been.”

She really _does _look a little sorry, which mollifies Jaime somewhat, even though he knows that Cersei can be crueler than anyone when she has a mind to be.

“I hate to agree with the ice queen, but she’s right,” Tyrion says, causing Cersei to flash a playful middle finger in his direction. “People have been saying the same kinds of things to me all my life, because they know that even if I’m a Lannister, I’m an easy target because I won’t go running to my big siblings for anything but the worst of the insults. I’m not as easy a target as I once was, thanks to Bronn, but I’m still quite the favorite.”

Jaime looks thoughtfully at the television, trying to make the events of the past few days make sense in his head. He always hates to have it pointed out—usually by his siblings—that there are big social issues that he doesn’t understand just by virtue of circumstances of his birth. And _this_, the idea that being _attractive _is the thing that keeps him from understanding…

“She said something to me today,” he says. “And I blew it off, but…she said that the reason she’s been avoiding me lately is because it makes her look like some pathetic ugly girl, mooning around after me if I’ve got a girlfriend.”

“It _already _looked like that,” Cersei mutters. “You were just single at the time, so it looked like she knew her place.”

“Her _place_?”

“You know. Supportive ugly girl friend who secretly pines for him.”

“But she’s _not _pining,” Jaime argues, and Cersei snorts. Tyrion laughs outright.

“Oh, Jaime,” he sighs. “Please never change. I mean it.”

“_I’m_ the one pining, as you all like to remind me.”

“Yes, because you’re a dramatic idiot who thrives on it,” Tyrion says. Cersei sits up and looks at him sternly.

“Let me ask you something,” she says. “You said she’s been avoiding you. Do you mean at school? Or do you mean in general?”

“In general.”

“So, like, texts? Your romantic after-practice dates?”

“She cancelled those,” Jaime admits, and Cersei and Tyrion exchange a glance. Jaime thrives on the moments when his siblings get along, because they come so infrequently and because it allows him to love them equally and without complications and without having to dodge trying to pick a side in whatever fight they’ve found themselves in. The exception, of course, being when they gang up on him like this.

“She cancelled your little dates,” Cersei says slowly.

“Our practices. She says I don’t need them anymore.”

“That’s interesting. So your one-on-one practices that no one watches, she cancelled. And the texts? Has she been texting you less?”

“I guess. Yeah. I think she’s worried of making Elia think, you know, that there’s something going on.”

“And you can’t just tell her that you and Elia aren’t really dating?” Tyrion wonders.

“I would rather if only the three of us knew, and Elia, obviously, but…I suppose that would be an option,” Cersei says.

“Right, because that’s a totally normal thing to say to your friend. ‘Hey, so I know everyone thinks I’m dating Elia, but I need to tell you specifically for some reason that I’m not. Can we go back to having our practices?’ Very subtle.”

“That’s _exactly_ what you should say. Friends talk about shit like that,” Tyrion sighs.

The thing about Jaime—and the thing about Jaime when it comes to _Brienne—_is that Jaime has never been more afraid of anyone in his entire life.

It isn’t just that he likes her. Or that she’s his friend. Or even the fact that he is apparently the only person who can see something in her that seems utterly obvious to him. It’s all of those things at once, but it’s also just sheer, blinding terror. He dated Cat Tully for two years, but that was the easiest transition from friendship ever. It was barely a _start _to a relationship. They just made out once at the winter dance in eighth grade, and from that day forward they were boyfriend and girlfriend. It was kid stuff. With Brienne, Jaime’s thinking of things like college and a shared apartment and a fucking _mortgage _and what kind of engagement ring she might like. He wants her to be forever. He can’t imagine ever wanting anyone else. And every time he thinks about taking a shot and _missing_, it fills him with this paralyzing panic, because she is so fucking skittish. He could scare her off so easily. He could ruin everything in a _moment. _And her instinct, apparently, is to pull away. It’s not making him _less _afraid, now that he knows that.

“He’s not going to tell her,” Cersei says aside to Tyrion. It would be insulting how sure she is if she wasn’t also correct.

“I can’t,” Jaime says.

“You _won’t_. There’s a difference.”

“You’re scared,” Tyrion agrees. “That doesn’t mean you can’t.”

Jaime groans aloud with frustration, because it’s not so _simple_. How can they not see that? Tyrion always goes for what he wants, because he has developed the thickest skin in the world. And Cersei is terrifying enough that she’s confident because she knows that anything someone does to her will be answered tenfold because that is the kind of power that she has. Neither of them have the hesitation that he does, or the fear that he will fuck things up irrevocably. They barrel through life doing amazing, terrible, impossible things, and Jaime can’t even take one step without overthinking it and worrying about it.

He was different, before. Probably before the injury, but it was more just _Brienne_. That feeling of falling in love with her. That feeling of not knowing for sure if she would ever love him, too. And now he’s a senior in high school, and college is coming, and he still isn’t sure what he wants to do, and he and Brienne will be there _together_, and if he fucks up everything by wanting too much or misreading her, it’s going to be four years of attending the same school as the girl he fell in love with who didn’t love him back. He would rather continue to have her as a friend than have her as nothing.

He tries to explain this to them, but his siblings aren’t very good at listening, and he can tell that they’re bored and quietly incredulous with every word he says.

“Jaime,” Cersei finally interrupts. “That’s what we’re trying to say. She _does _want you. She _does _like you. She wouldn’t have cancelled your one-on-one practices if she didn’t. If there was no one around watching you, that means it wasn’t about what other people might say.”

“Elia was waiting for me to drive her home,” Jaime reminds her. “_Elia _was there.”

“Are you saying Brienne was afraid that _Elia Martell _would judge her? Even _she _isn’t so skittish,” Tyrion snorts. “Was Elia watching your practices?”

“No, she was inside. But…”

“And you said that Brienne was acting _different _after you started dating Elia. Different how?”

“She never used to mind when I acted…I don’t know.” He can tell he’s blushing, and Cersei’s _already _laughing at him. “Flirty.”

“When you acted flirty,” Tyrion drawls, exchanging another shitty look with Cersei. Jaime sighs.

“You know what I mean.”

“I _do_. I’ve seen it. It’s humiliating to watch. And you say she never minded?”

“During practice, it always seemed like, I don’t know. Like she liked it. But then, after Elia…”

“You’re saying she was _fine _with you finding your cute little reasons to touch her and probably stand very close and look beseechingly into her eyes like some kind of tragic rescue dog on a sad commercial, and then suddenly after you got a girlfriend she decided that it was inappropriate.” Tyrion sighs, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Jaime, she _knew _you were flirting with her. She _liked _that you were flirting with her. And then you got a fucking girlfriend, and she’s _hurt_.”

“It’s so obvious,” Cersei says, shaking her head sadly. “Poor Brienne.”

“If she knew I was flirting, why wouldn’t she…”

“Even _you _aren’t so stupid,” Cersei snaps. “I keep telling you this! You can put all the signals you want into the universe. The ugliest girl in school is not going to make the first move on _you_!”

Jaime doesn’t bother this time to tell her not to say it, because he knows what she’s saying. He understands what she means. Brienne as good as _told _him that she considers herself ugly, and he knows Cersei’s right. Even if she does like him, she’s not ever going to let it show, is she? Not until he’s already admitted that _he _likes _her_.

“She would have to be _far _more audacious than she is,” Tyrion says. “Why, that would be like me asking out Shae when she was already dating a much older and more attractive member of the football team.”

“That’s exactly what you did,” Jaime points out dryly.

“I know,” Tyrion says, grinning. “I just wanted to make sure we all remember.”

“Believe me, we do,” Cersei sighs, but her lips are twitching a bit, and Jaime knows that she’s secretly proud of their little brother for pulling something like that off. She certainly spread the story through school quick enough. “Jaime, it’s going to need to be you, and I know you know that. But if you insist on being so childish about this: I’ll get a read on Brienne for you. I’ll talk to her tomorrow and…”

“No,” Jaime says quickly, too sharply, imagining his sister cornering Brienne and just…being _herself _about it. Gods, what a way to make sure that Brienne never talks to him again. He loves his sister, but he’s afraid of scaring Brienne off by _himself_. Cersei’s involvement would make that a certainty.

“Why not?” Cersei asks, affronted.

“You know how you can be,” he says. “You’ll say something hurtful.”

Now even more affronted, Cersei’s face turns downward into a mighty frown.

“Is that really what you think of me?” she asks. Jaime knows his sister, and he knows she’s not nearly hurt so much as she is annoyed that he has managed to _see _her in that way.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he says quietly. Cersei frowns at him, but she doesn’t argue.

* * *

Cersei, being Cersei, isn’t great at taking ‘no’ for an answer, especially when she’s annoyed about something. So it’s not a surprise when he comes home a few days later and finds her sitting on the couch, waiting for him. She pats the cushion next to her with a kind of conciliatory smile.

“I didn’t talk to her,” she says, once he has finally, reluctantly, sat down next to her.

“But?” he asks, knowing. She gives him a smile that admits only a little bit.

“I had Taena ask around,” she says.

Asking around, Jaime knows, probably means that Taena said all kinds of mocking things about Brienne while she was doing it. If Jaime said anything about it, Cersei and Taena would both giggle and proclaim that it helped sell the illusion of being undercover. He doesn’t bother.

“I didn’t want you to do that,” he says.

“Hyle Hunt is planning on asking her out,” Cersei says. She looks at Jaime carefully, tilting her head to one side. Trying to read his reaction. He isn’t sure he has one.

“Okay,” he says. _Good luck, _he’s thinking, almost amused at the idea.

“She’s going to say yes,” Cersei continues. Now Jaime’s confused. A little irritated.

“What? Why? How do you know?”

“I hear things,” Cersei reminds him, demurring, looking away, sly and pretty and terrible as always. “Seems they’ve hit it off, and when she knows he’s interested, she’ll say yes. It might not have been all Saint Brienne when she switched partners in chemistry class. Maybe she saw an opportunity.”

That hurts, for some reason. The thought that he may have been moved as a pawn. But it doesn’t sound like something Brienne would do.

_It sounds like something _Cersei _would do,_ he reminds himself.

* * *

He watches them the next day in chemistry, because apparently he cannot help but torture himself, even though he knows it won’t do him any good. Hyle _does _seem to lean in close to Brienne every once in a while, and he has this terrible, expectant smile like he’s trying to make some kind of move, but Brienne doesn’t seem to notice. She mostly seems confused by whatever he’s trying to show her.

“Are you _sure _Cersei wasn’t wrong?” Elia asks after they’ve spent a few minutes falling behind on their own project so that they can both scrutinize the apparently budding romance a few tables over.

“Cersei’s never wrong about this stuff,” Jaime admits. “If she says Brienne’s going to say yes, Brienne’s going to say yes.”

“Okay, but saying _yes_ doesn’t mean she actually likes him,” Elia points out.

“Why would she say yes if she doesn’t like him?”

“Oh, Jaime,” Elia sighs, putting her chin in her fist and looking at him in a way that would probably be insulting if it was anyone else doing it. But it’s _Elia_, so instead it’s just embarrassing how sad for him she looks. “It isn’t like anyone else is asking her.”

“That doesn’t mean she should just accept the first person who does!” Jaime insists. Elia rolls her eyes and jabs him with her elbow.

“She’s a girl who isn’t used to being told she’s pretty. She wants to _feel _pretty. And if she thinks you’re off the market, then why _wouldn’t _she say yes to Hyle? If he wants to date her, she might as well try it. That’s probably what she’s thinking.”

It’s not like Jaime doesn’t understand that he’s being ridiculous. He knows that everyone else is right and that he’s just a big idiot who ties himself into knots over nothing. But there’s something that separates the part of him that _understands _and the part of him that can do anything about it. Understanding that he’s freaking out for nothing doesn’t make him freak out _less. _It just makes him feel worse about the fact that he can’t get his shit together.

When Jaime is faced with a circumstance like this, where there are two ways he can react, he almost always chooses to do the stupid and reckless thing. In this case, the stupid and reckless thing would definitely be to say screw this whole thing, screw the Elia plan, and go ask out Brienne before Hyle can try. It’s what Cersei would advise him to do. It’s what Tyrion would advise him to do. It’s probably even what Elia would tell him to do.

But Brienne? What would Brienne tell him to do?

That one’s easy. Brienne would say that he made a promise to Elia, and that he should keep it. Brienne would also say that it isn’t _her _fault that he’s allowed his constant anxiety over her to prevent him from making a move while Hyle Hunt, with the plain face and the forgettable personality, has enough drive to do it.

Hells, maybe that means Hyle _does _like Brienne more than Jaime does, though that would have to be an awful lot, and someone as bland as Hyle just frankly doesn’t seem capable of passion like that. He’s on the _robotics _team.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says to Elia, his shoulders slumping. “Maybe she _should _go out with him.”

“That wasn’t what I was saying at all!”

“It’s what I’m saying,” Jaime says. “If he can actually work up the courage, maybe that means he deserves her.”

“Or it means that he doesn’t care about her nearly as much as you do. Think about it, Jaime. If you cared about her less, you wouldn’t be this nervous. Hyle is…I’m sure Hyle likes her. She’s very easy to like. But he doesn’t like her nearly as much as you do.”

“Maybe I’m just not ready yet,” Jaime says. He doesn’t think that’s true. He’s been ready to date Brienne since he got back to school after his injury last year and she smiled at him, all teeth and big lips and freckles, and he knew that his sudden decision to want her hadn’t just been born of too many painkillers and a temporary hero complex. He’s _ready. _He’s just not ready to risk everything for it.

Then again, maybe that means he’s not ready after all.

“Do you want me to talk to her?” Elia asks. She looks sort of disappointed, he thinks. Like she wants something more from him. Probably she does. He knows this attempted, pathetic romance isn’t exactly the stuff of movies.

“No,” he says quietly. “Let’s just…see how this plays out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, I am Jaime, and I am Brienne, and I am also Elia, and I ASSUME you're all Tyrion at this point, but just have patience with me lmao. You should know by now what you're getting into with me!!


	4. I would rather tell you lies than give in to the fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's another early one for you! I'm actually not sure I'll be able to post tomorrow, so hopefully the long one today makes up for it!

If someone had asked Brienne before this whole Jaime-dating-Elia thing if she was satisfied with her number of friends, she would have said yes. Brienne has never been the kind of person, like Cersei Lannister, who thrives when they’re surrounded by friends. That hasn’t ever been her style. Maybe that’s just the kind of thing that people tell themselves when they don’t _have _a lot of friends—like how Brienne is constantly telling herself that she’s _fine _if Jaime Lannister never falls in love with her—but it doesn’t feel like that kind of self-deception. She’s really just happy with a few close people that she can count on.

Still, once Elia has become a part of her life, she has to admit that she was missing out on something.

Sure, it throws a gigantic wrench into her otherwise-solid plan to avoid Jaime as much as possible, because now it seems like she sees him _more_. It’s just always with Elia. Maybe that should be worse, and maybe it _is _worse, in some ways. But Elia is _Elia_, and she makes it impossible to hate the situation even when Brienne’s feeling particularly dramatic and filled with agony about all of it.

Brienne, it turns out, is just very good at pretending, even to herself. She pretends it doesn’t hurt, and she manages somehow to convince _herself _that it doesn’t hurt. She pretends that her crush on Jaime was of the same flavor as the fleeting crushes she’s had on other people throughout the years. It isn’t heartbreaking. She isn’t heart_broken. _She was just silly and allowed herself to catch feelings for a too-pretty boy, and now she’s going to be _fine._ She pretends she doesn’t notice that Jaime is a bit prickly about the extra practice thing, and she can tell it annoys him that she ignores his wounded feelings, or maybe that she doesn’t even seem like she _notices _them, but she will keep pretending until he’s come to terms with it. She knows she hurt Jaime by pulling away, and she won’t do that anymore. But she will protect herself until she no longer needs to.

Elia is a lot like Jaime in the sense that the slightest sign of kindness is reciprocated with absurd loyalty, and she starts approaching Brienne when she’s on her own, and they even hang out a few times after school without Jaime. So that’s great. Being friends with a couple when she desperately wants to fuck one half of the couple and, truly, would not say no to the second half. It’s really good for her self-esteem.

It’s just that Elia is so _nice_, and Brienne knows that she’s lonely. She lost most of her friend group when Rhaegar cheated on her and dumped her for Lyanna Stark. People usually flock to the wounded party's side in those kinds of things, _obviously_, but for some reason Rhaegar Targaryen is the kind of absurdly popular person who breaks the rules just by existing. Brienne’s never understood the fascination, but people are _obsessed _with the Targaryen family, and Rhaegar in particular. They all just seem _fine_ with what he did to Elia. It’s absolute bullshit.

Also bullshit were all those idiotic rumors about how she was still so hung up on him and she was pathetically pining away while Rhaegar moved on with Lyanna. It’s improved now that she’s been dating Jaime, because Jaime’s maybe the only guy who could compete with Rhaegar in terms of general likability, but she still seems pretty lonely. Brienne’s happy to be her friend. If it was anyone else dating Jaime, Brienne might struggle with it more, but it’s not anyone else. It’s _Elia_. At least Brienne feels like she _deserves _him. She also feels like that’s a shitty thing to think. But it’s true. If anything, Elia might be too good for _him_!

She _is_ a bit nervous about how Catelyn will receive it. Catelyn is dating Lyanna's big brother and is basically an honorary Stark at this point. She and Brienne have only really been _good _friends for about a year and a half, but Brienne’s been acquainted with her for long enough to know that Catelyn’s brand of loyalty is very similar to Jaime’s. She picks people to stick by, and then she sticks by them. She’ll follow them anywhere.

As far as Brienne knows, Catelyn’s been silent on the whole situation. She isn’t like Cersei in the sense that the whole student body looks to her for a reaction after scandals, but she’s still pretty and kind and popular in the way that means the fullness of the word: well-liked and on good terms with most of the people in their grade. Being in the middle of both parties at least tangentially, it makes sense that she might want to stay neutral, but Brienne has no idea how she might _feel _about it. Catelyn doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would just be all right with Rhaegar and Lyanna, but Brienne has been surprised and disappointed by people before.

Except of _course_ Catelyn just looks proud when she sees Brienne talking to Elia in the hallway, and of _course_ she leaves the Stark lunch table in full view of everyone one day, dragging Brienne over with her to sit with Jaime and Elia after a quick conversation with Ned and a pleased kiss on the cheek that he blushes about afterward.

“He’s not exactly happy about it either,” she says to Brienne after lunch, when they’re both headed to their afternoon history class. “Lyanna’s stubborn. She always has been. She _rules _that house, and she especially rules Ned.” She rolls her eyes fondly. “He’s afraid to upset her by saying anything about it, but I’m not. Elia Martell didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not the kind of fool who’d believe the gossip they were spreading about her, and I’m not the kind of fool who’s going to let their opinions sway me.”

Brienne only smiles, hearing the defiant edge in Catelyn’s voice that always seems to be behind everything she says. Like she’s constantly gearing up to argue.

“Elia’s really sweet,” she says. “I’m glad we sat with her.”

Catelyn gives her a look, then. It’s only _mildly _piercing, but she’s such a motherly person that every slightly piercing look feels damning. Catelyn’s looks always feel like they’re warning you that they know exactly what you’re hiding and that they promise to love you no matter what but you should fess up.

She looks at Brienne like that a lot. Brienne has still managed to avoid being guilt-tripped into telling her about her crush on Jaime, but moments like this make her wonder if it’s possible that Catelyn doesn’t already know.

“_You’re _sweet,” she says, like she thinks Brienne needs the reminder. Brienne’s afraid that she’s going to say something else, but she doesn’t. Just shakes her head, pulls her eyes away, and keeps walking.

* * *

Hyle Hunt is _fine_. He’s much, much shorter than her, and he has such a plain face that sometimes when Brienne passes him in the hallway she worries about saying hello because what if that isn’t Hyle? What if that’s some other kid with pale skin and brown hair? But he smiles at her and waves at her in the hall and chats with her at her locker and doesn’t seem bothered to be seen with her. And, sure, people like Catelyn and Elia and Jaime do that too, but this is the first time it feels like it could be more than just friendship. He seems like he might actually _like _her.

It’s believable, is the thing. No girls are looking twice at Hyle Hunt because if they look away from him, they immediately forget what he looked like. And no boys are looking twice at Brienne Tarth because once is enough to know they don’t want her. There’s a certain kind of pathetic _sense_ to his tentative flirtations. Like he’s _trying_ to find her attractive and funny and all the things he wants. Like he’s lived for eighteen years and now understands that he’s not ever going to be better looking than he is, or more clever, or better able to draw in girls like Elia Martell. So why _not _go for a girl like Brienne who would be glad to have him? They get along, and she knows she makes him laugh. It’s not the worst start to a relationship.

It’s a smart play, and Brienne knows she should be happy. Maybe she is, in a general way. Maybe she can at least get a date out of it. A kiss if she’s lucky. Maybe they’ll sleep together, and she can finally know what all the fucking fuss is about.

Maybe she can stop thinking about Jaime Lannister and his stupid golden hair, and maybe she can go back to being friends with him the way she should have been happy to be all along. They can play soccer together and go to college together and maybe get that apartment together the way they used to talk about. It could be something good and wholesome and not torturous as long as she stops expecting something that’s never going to happen. She knows she can’t just _stop _being friends with him. It’s the most tempting thing because it’s the _easiest _thing, but she won’t do it knowing it hurts him, and she doesn’t want to do it, either. She cares about him. She cares about him _so much_, and she likes spending time with him. They can be friends. She can survive it. She just has to make it through this awkward period of acceptance first.

And Hyle can probably help with that! He’s nice to her. Nicer to her than Jaime, probably, because Jaime’s humor tends to be kind of biting sometimes, and Hyle’s isn’t. He doesn’t make fun of her, even in a gentle teasing way. He acknowledges that she’s ugly and doesn’t try to argue with her about it, but he’s always quick to cheerfully point out his own lack of interesting features and how physical beauty fades anyway. He’s just so _practical_. It’s endearing, because Brienne desperately wishes _she _was practical. And he never makes his practicality seem like a difficulty. Like her looks are something he’ll have to get _used _to. He just accepts everything exactly as it is. He doesn’t try to tell her that she’s something she’s not. _He _wouldn’t look so shocked if she referred to herself as ugly. He would say, _well, yeah, but who cares? _She thinks she might need that.

With Hyle as a partner, chemistry becomes easy. Jaime and Elia struggle a bit more than both of them used to, but Brienne is always willing to offer a hand. Ms. Tyrell sees her whispering instructions to them during experiments, because Ms. Tyrell is terrifying and sees everything, but she only shakes her head in Brienne’s direction and then looks away and lets Brienne continue to show Jaime and Elia the correct way to do whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing.

“Seems like Hyle's a better partner than I ever was,” Jaime says once with a strangely muted, rueful smile. “You actually seem to know what you’re talking about.”

“He’s _technically_ better,” Brienne concedes. It makes Jaime’s smile grow, just a little.

* * *

Brienne’s first date with Hyle is going to be at a restaurant in town that’s kind of on the fancy end of medium. It’s not a bad pick. It’s not really a _fun_ pick, either. If it wasn’t Brienne’s first date ever and she wasn’t just grateful to be asked, she would probably ask for something more dynamic. Paintball or ice skating or _something_. Dinner just seems so formal. So adult, but not in a way that makes it feel mature. It’s more in a way that makes it seem like it’s _routine_, somehow. Checking off a box. Like they’re trying to pretend to be real adults just because Hyle thinks that’s what they should do.

When she tells Cat about it, Cat looks unimpressed. Elia furrows her brows but shakes her head and smiles.

“He’s probably worried about impressing you,” she says. “Can I come over before it and help you get ready? I’ve always wanted to do that for someone!”

“Oh, me too!” Cat agrees, brushing Brienne’s hair away from her face and tucking it back with another bobby pin. “I’ve always wanted to get you all spruced up for a date.”

Brienne knows it’s hopeless to spruce her up. She is not the sort of ugly that _can _be spruced up. Girls like Elia and Catelyn exist in this place where _sprucing up _means improving what’s already naturally gorgeous, but Brienne feels like she’d need a movie-style makeover just to feel _plain. _But she likes the idea of it, even if she doesn’t see the point. She can imagine the two of them coming over to her house. She likes the idea of them talking with her about their own disastrous dates. Trying to calm her down a little bit. Make her feel better. Her mother died when she was young, and she knows that part of the reason she gets along so well with Cat is because Catelyn Tully is the most motherly person on the planet. Brienne has always craved the presence of women like her. Strong and unyielding but soft, too.

* * *

Maybe, Brienne reflects later, as both girls bustle around her room, pulling options out of her closet, she should feel more insulted. She doesn’t, really, but there’s a feeling like she might be, somewhere deep. She knows who she is. She knows what she looks like. She knows that Elia and Cat are trying to help. Maybe she just wishes that she was the kind of girl who didn’t _need _help, but she knows she isn’t. No one has ever taught her how to do this. Her father had girlfriends growing up, and they all seemed utterly at a loss about what to do with Selwyn’s tragically awkward little girl. Attempted bonding shopping trips were nightmares, and a lot of the women were downright catty about it, and it left Brienne with a lot of horrible internalized misogyny and an inner insistence that she didn’t _want _to be like those stupid, gorgeous women anyway. She’s still unlearning it. She still looks at Elia and Cat and hates them sometimes, just a little, because it’s easier than despairing over the fact that she will never be them even though she wants to be.

She’s just always been so _bad _at this stuff. Girl stuff, she called it when she was younger, with a sneer and a snarl and a carefully hidden inner terror, like an animal stumbling blindly away from something it doesn’t understand. She fumbles with makeup and always uses too much whenever she feels the compulsion to try. Her clothes are fine, but she’s always been limited by what _fits_, which usually means skinny jeans or jeggings and t-shirts made for men. Anything that might qualify as a _cute date outfit_ is shoved in the back of her closet, untouched since whatever idiot whim made her think she looked good in it in the changing room wore off when she got home and saw herself in her own bedroom mirror.

Catelyn starts pulling out wadded clumps of clothing and tossing them to Elia, who sets aside the ones she likes. Catelyn hums as she digs the iron and ironing board out of the hall closet. Brienne is pretty sure no one has touched it in years, since her father started just hanging his shirts from the shower curtain rod to let the steam sort them out.

Elia holds up wrinkled dresses and skirts that fall shapelessly as she squints and tilts her head and looks like she’s trying to imagine Brienne wearing them. Brienne feels horribly _witnessed_, like these beautiful girls who don’t _have _to try but do try anyway are seeing evidence of the times she was delusional enough to think _trying _would make a difference on someone as ugly as her. Is there anything more embarrassing than an ugly person _trying_? Maybe when that ugly person tries and fails. It’s better not to try. She should just wear jeans and a t-shirt. It’s not like Hyle’s expecting anything better from her. That’s the whole _point _of Hyle.

But Elia holds up a dress before Brienne can panic and kick them out, and she says, “oh, definitely this one.” Catelyn agrees with enthusiasm, and Brienne stares at the black fabric as Elia hands it over and Catelyn begins ironing. Is it too late to call Hyle and cancel? Is it too late to beg for laser tag instead?

* * *

The dress is too short, just above her knees no matter how many times she tries to tug it down. She’s pretty sure she bought it for a wedding, except then her father’s girlfriend at the time scorned the idea of wearing black to a wedding, and she was forced into this horrible pink thing instead. Brienne is nervous, looking at her knees and her freshly-shaved legs in the mirror, but feels like it would be rude to reject it after Catelyn spent so much time ironing it. She must have been mad when she bought it, or maybe it was a few growth spurts ago. Maybe it was a demure dress, once. It certainly isn’t now. It’s black and fairly simple with a neckline that swoops but doesn’t _plunge_, and the sleeves are short and sort of filmy, hanging down over her forearms, accentuating them. Elia does her makeup while Catelyn curls her hair, and when it’s done, the result is better than anything she could have achieved on her own.

She’s not sure she’d go so far as to say she looks pretty. But she looks pretty _for her_. She has red lipstick and smoky eyes. She’s afraid at first that the lipstick draws too much attention to her lips, and that her arms are too muscular to be displayed like this in this dress, and that her legs are much too long to be out like that. But the more she looks at herself, the better she feels. The pieces of her face that always feel wrong seem to come together more. Or maybe she just gets used to it, seeing a face that isn’t wholly her own. It isn’t _terrible_. She hugs Elia tightly when she’s done, and she hopes the other girl doesn’t realize how sickeningly grateful she really is.

* * *

Jaime arrives to pick up Elia ten minutes before Hyle is supposed to, and he freezes in the front yard when he sees Brienne standing in the doorway. For a moment, it’s middle school again, and he’s That Lannister Kid who knows exactly how to make her cry, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s more polite now. He visibly swallows back whatever words he wants to say, and he calls out to Elia that they need to go.

Before she leaves, Elia kisses her on the cheek.

“You’re stunning,” she promises.

* * *

Hyle doesn’t show up when he’s supposed to.

He doesn’t show up for ten minutes after that.

By fifteen, Brienne is so sure that he isn’t coming, and she’s shocked when the doorbell rings.

He’s standing on the front porch looking small and sheepish and contrite, and she’s honestly ready to forgive him just because he’s _here_, but then he says, “Brienne, I can’t…I have to tell you something.”

* * *

She doesn’t go to school for two days after that.

She cries herself to sleep the first night, after ripping the dress off her stupid body so hard that the fabric tears. She scrubs her makeup until her face is red and raw. She douses her curls until they’re wet and lank and horrible. She goes to sleep and wakes at midnight to tell her father that she won’t be going to school in the morning. He doesn’t ask questions. He looks her over, takes in her expression, and nods.

The next day, Catelyn texts her first. Then Howland. Ned. Elia. Finally Jaime, just after their chemistry class would have gotten out.

The others are all questions about her date or wondering where she is, but his is different.

_I’ll kill them_, he writes.

* * *

_“I can’t do it,” Hyle had said, and there was real grief in his expression. “I’m sorry. I thought it was funny at first, but it’s _not_. You really do look nice. And you’re funny, and you’re kind. My mom was so excited about me going on this date and I realized she had no idea I was just doing it to win a bet, and I feel like a total fucking monster, Brienne. I’m so, so sorry.”_

_She believed him, and she supposed that it was a kindness. It didn’t feel like it._

* * *

_Don’t. I just want to forget about it_, she tells Jaime. She doesn’t ask how he found out. Jaime’s twin is clued-in to the entire student body. It’s possible she knew all along that this bet was happening, or maybe she only found out after Hyle revealed it. Maybe she told Jaime as a courtesy, or maybe Jaime had to ask her. It could go either way with Cersei. She reminds Brienne of those myths about the old gods, watching over the lives of people with a vaguely curious detachment. Brienne’s existence is no more important to Cersei’s than a gnat is to a lion’s.

Jaime doesn’t text her back. She shuts off her phone. She sleeps again.

* * *

When she gets back to school, she’s terrified. She’s sure that everyone knows by now about the bet put together by Hyle and his friends on the hockey team. Everyone’s eyes are drawn to her in ways they haven’t been since she first arrived and was a curiosity to everyone. People have grown used to her, and they haven’t been as outwardly cruel as they were once, but now she finds herself certain that they’re going to be.

Then again, the _bet _is infinitely more cruel than any words they could come up with. Nothing they say, nothing they do, will compare to what she felt when Hyle told her the truth.

Elia and Jaime are waiting for her at her locker, and Elia literally jumps to hug Brienne fiercely, her small body trembling with righteous rage as Brienne holds her up and almost, nearly laughs.

“I’m so sorry,” Elia says. “I’m so sorry, Brienne. Obviously, we have to switch back in chemistry.”

“No,” Brienne says, automatically. “No, Hyle told me everything. He's…”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jaime hisses. “_Brienne_.”

“I don’t care _what _he told you,” Elia agrees. Brienne doesn’t think she’s ever seen Elia angry in her life. Elia’s boyfriend of almost three years cheated on her with a _freshman_, and Elia just looked kind of wilted and sad about it before she pulled herself together and hid everything behind a pleasant mask. She never said a bad word about Lyanna or Rhaegar. Just held her head high and continued on her way. But she’s angry _now_. “He felt guilty because he did a terrible thing, but he still _did _that terrible thing! You did a nice thing in switching partners with me so that I could work with Jaime, and you were repaid with horribleness, and it’s not going to continue. I’m switching back in chemistry, Brienne.”

She looks at Brienne very firmly until Brienne nods, and then she squeezes Brienne’s big hand in her own small one. She gives Jaime a stern look as if warning him against saying anything rude, and then she stalks down the hallway.

“She’s terrifying when she’s angry, isn’t she?” Jaime asks. Brienne finds that she can’t look at him when he’s talking to her like this, because it’s all small and hopeful and sad at once, and she knows that he’s about as lost as she is. He’s never been very good at being _serious_. It’s almost funny that he’s trying to be now.

“Don’t ever piss her off, I guess,” Brienne says weakly. She starts opening her locker, hoping that Jaime will follow his girlfriend, but he seems determined to linger. Or shadow her like a bodyguard. “Jaime, I’m fine.”

“_I’m _not,” Jaime argues. “I knew he was going to ask you out, and I knew I didn’t like him, but I…shit. I should have told you, or…”

“Did you know about the bet?” Brienne asks, finally looking at him. He looks stricken by the question as if she had accused him, though she hadn’t meant to.

“No!” he exclaims, surging closer, weirdly grabbing the fabric of her sweatshirt at her stomach in one fist, like he’s trying to keep her from running. “No, I swear. Cersei just told me that Hyle was going to ask you out. That’s _all_. If I had known, I would have…”

“Killed him?” Brienne guesses. Jaime smiles reluctantly. His sharp, crooked smile that she likes so much. Catlike and almost cruel except when it’s directed towards people he likes.

“Well, yeah,” he says. “I would have asked Tyrion and Bronn for help. I bet they know a good place to stash a hockey team’s worth of corpses.”

“The others didn’t even try anything yet,” Brienne mutters, shoving her books from her backpack into her locker, trying to conceal her shaking hands. “Mark was being weirdly nice the other day, I guess, but that was it. Hyle said that they were giving him a chance, because he was the first to ask me out. If he managed to fuck me after our date last night, he would have won. If not, I was _fair game_.”

Jaime makes a choking sound, and when she looks at him she sees that he’s _furious_. Not just angry the way Elia was, but furious in this horrible, building way that she recognizes.

She remembers seeing it from across the field. Hoat sliding into Jaime’s legs. Knocking him down. Standing up. Looking down _directly _at him and then stomping on his wrist. Jaime Lannister was an asshole to Brienne for a long while in middle school, but even _then_ she would have been angry to watch the way Hoat smiled as Jaime screamed. But Jaime was kind of her friend at that point, and he was her _teammate_, and she had never been so blindingly furious as she was in that moment.

Head-butting Hoat after he challenged her was the most viscerally satisfying moment of her entire life. It was _worth _the fucking red card. It was worth the talking-to from Coach Selmy and the disappointment of her father. As she looks at Jaime and sees the same rage on his face, she knows that if she lets him, he will find Hyle and the other hockey team boys, and he will keep swinging until they stop him or until they’ve all been taken out.

“Jaime,” she says. “Don’t. Please. I just want to pretend like it didn’t happen.”

Jaime shakes his head, and she thinks he’s going to argue or storm off and do it anyway, but instead he just stands up on his toes and flings his arms around her neck, pulling her into a strong, comforting hug.

Brienne doesn’t know what to do. Jaime’s hand is on the back of her neck, holding her head steady, against his shoulder. His other hand is on her back, and she can feel the pads of his fingers against her spine even through her sweatshirt. She reluctantly wraps one arm around him, feeling too awkward with her hands down by her side, and it makes him pull her even closer.

She feels _safe_. Standing in the middle of the hallway at school. All these eyes potentially on her. She still feels safe with Jaime’s arms around her. She’s never felt like this anywhere but safely locked away in her bedroom, or watching a movie with her dad, or gossiping and watching TV in Cat’s room after school. It’s this feeling like nothing in the world can touch her because she knows that she’s in a place and with a person who would never hurt her, and it’s such a strange feeling to have about _Jaime Lannister _of all people, because her feelings for him have been such a torrent of confusion and passion that she didn’t ever think she would equate him with _safety _this way.

But that’s exactly what this is, and it feels like her heart is mending itself even as it’s also breaking because he isn’t _hers_.

“Thank you,” she says, pulling away slowly. Jaime looks a little less torn apart by his fury, as if he transmuted those feelings into the power of the hug.

“I wish you would let me do something to help you,” he says.

She feels so _guilty_, then. She spent so long after they became friends waiting for him to _turn _suddenly. Go back to being That Lannister Kid. Maybe she never really got over that stage, because even in the middle of this gigantic crush on him, she still hasn’t been treating him the way she treats her friends.

She’s always hated people like Petyr Baelish, who treat friendships with people like they’re basically just stepping stones for sex. And she knows, she really does, that what’s going on with her feelings for Jaime isn’t the same. Protecting yourself when a crush is unobtainable doesn’t make you a bad person. But it feels like it, for a moment.

She’s been trying to avoid Jaime to nurse her own wounded feelings. She’s been trying to alter their friendship on her terms because she thought, or maybe just assumed, that _all _of her feelings were stronger than his. But he isn’t holding anything back, and she can see the way he earnestly _means _his words.

How could she seriously fancy herself in love with Jaime if she didn’t realize that her distance would hurt him? How could she say that her crush was even _real _if she didn’t believe that he was the kind of person for whom friendships are important? She knows from his tone that he would do anything he could if she asked him. He’s her _friend. _He cares about her. It might not be in the same way, but that doesn’t mean it’s less.

“You are helping me,” she says. “Just by being my friend. Seriously.” He smiles at her, but he still looks sad, and he wavers a bit like he knows he should get to class but doesn’t feel like leaving her yet. She feels something stirring in her. Some nameless want. Some feeling of surrender. “Maybe we could just…run drills after practice? Like we used to?”

Jaime smiles at her, and he nods eagerly, and she feels her own smile coming across her face. Involuntary. Things don’t seem nearly as bad as they had this morning.

* * *

It’s interesting, how the school reacts. For the second time in a month, Brienne finds herself confused by it. First their incomprehensible treatment of Elia, and now _this_.

People actually seem _angry _about the bet.

Hyle manages to escape the worst of the judgement, because people apparently know that he’s the one who told her everything, but Brienne hears the other students throughout the day comparing notes about who they know for a fact is involved. A lot of it is framed in a way that doesn’t exactly make Brienne feel _good_: people are saying things like “Mullendore has a lot of nerve if he thought even Brienne Tarth would be desperate enough”. But mostly it’s nothing so bad as that. A few people stop her in the hallway to talk about how horrible it all is, and most of them are nice enough. Arthur Dayne, captain of the soccer team, usually tries his best to stay out of things, but he’s on the warpath, talking about the hockey team’s lack of good sportsmanship to anyone who will listen. Brienne even overhears Cersei Lannister talking about them, laughing at the idea that any of them fancied themselves such a prize. Her word carries weight, Brienne knows. Jaime’s sister is often the one who sets the tone after scandals, because people like Varys will make sure that her opinions are known. By the end of the day, there won’t be a single person willing to support the guys who made the bets.

It’s a curious feeling of lightness in her that follows her all the way to chemistry, where Elia is sitting back beside Hyle, glowering at him. Brienne _does _feel a little bad for him, because Hyle was sorry enough to tell her the truth, and sorry enough to apologize to her. She smiles at him a little on her way by, and he smiles back. Sheepish and chagrinned. But Elia and Jaime were right to make her switch back. As she moves to take her seat beside Jaime, she feels like a weight has been lifted off of her shoulders. The days she stayed at home dreading this day were such lonely, pathetic things. She had been so sure that she knew exactly how it was going to go, because that was how it _always _went. People like her didn’t get help from people like Elia Martell and Jaime Lannister, and they certainly didn’t get help from people like Cersei Lannister.

“Thank you,” she says to Jaime, and he smiles back at her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: I'll totally have time to reply to all my comments, edit the chapter, and post it before I have to leave tomorrow. As long as I don't sleep late or something.   
also me: *wakes up at 11 am like a fucking teenager*
> 
> so I'll be responding to last chapter's comments, uh, a bit later than usual!


	5. maybe one day you'll understand why

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, I'm gonna be posting twice today. Both because I didn't post yesterday and also because I know people are gonna be mad about the way this chapter ends and I'm a coward so that's that
> 
> I have reached the point with this chapter where I'm basically just like FINE I'm DONE WITH IT so hopefully it's not too nonsensical near the end where I edited it 15 thousand times!

When Brienne smiles at Jaime in chemistry class, sitting back next to him at _their_ table, Jaime feels less burdened by the day than he did.

Earlier, after he left Brienne at her locker, Jaime hadn’t been sure _what _to feel. He generally wouldn’t call himself a violent person. He sometimes reacts violently to things when his family is involved—punching Aerys because of Aunt Genna comes to mind—but for the most part he has learned to control those impulses. Soccer and boxing both help him get out some of the aggression that he had trouble with when he was younger, but sometimes it just isn’t enough. Sometimes it bubbles up inside him, this terrible roiling rage that comes from seeing an injustice go unpunished, and there’s just nothing _productive _he can do with it. A problem he can’t solve, a bully he’s not allowed to punch, a Hyle Hunt he’s not allowed to murder.

Finding out that the girl he desperately likes was the target of something as juvenile and unbelievably shitty as a bet over which guy would be able to _take her virginity_ made those impulses roar to life. And they’re still in him somewhere, throbbing and furious and wounded, like his wrist after Hoat got to it. Some formless terrible pain that just _won’t stop_.

He knows it isn’t his fault. He knows that blaming himself won’t help anything. He knows that there’s no guarantee that Brienne would have said yes to him if he had made his feelings known. That doesn’t stop him from hating himself for being too afraid to ask.

He went to Cersei, after he left Brienne.

“Did you know?” he asked her, and she sighed and slammed her locker shut. She didn’t look at him. He knew what that meant. “You _knew_, and you didn’t tell me.”

“I told you he was going to ask her out.”

“Don’t you _dare _get fucking semantic with me, Cersei, seven hells,” Jaime growled, and Cersei looked at him with this raw sort of irritated expression. Not afraid or hurt by his anger. Just put off by it, like it was something unsightly that she didn’t want to look at.

“I’m not being _semantic_. I’m reminding you. Yes, I knew about the bet. I also knew that Hyle was going to ask her out as _part _of the bet. But he’s a social climber. Not a very good one, but he knows the _rules _at least.”

“This isn’t about Hyle. This is about…”

“Me not telling you about the bet so that you could swoop in and save your lady love?” Cersei asked. When they were younger, they used to fight a lot. Physically, because they were the same size and because their father usually wasn’t around to tell them to knock it off. Jaime felt some of that childish desire to shove Cersei the way he would have once. Push her against the locker so she could slap him and pull his hair until one of the teachers would have to separate them. But they weren’t children anymore, so he suppressed it. He could tell from Cersei’s small smile that she knew he was struggling. “It _is _about Hyle. Hyle’s an idiot for agreeing to it in the first place, but he’s not a _total _monster. I’m sure he thought the bet was a good way to get in with the hockey team, but he had to realize pretty quickly that the optics weren’t good for him.” She pinned him in place with her eyes, making sure that he was listening. “Yes, I knew he was involved in the bet. I also knew that he would chicken out and tell her. And that’s exactly what he did.”

“She’s _humiliated_,” Jaime said.

“She would have been humiliated no matter what I did. That kind of thing never would have died quietly. Someone was always going to spill.”

“But you knew she liked him.”

“_Liked _him?” Cersei laughed. She looked at him with something that was almost, but not quite, pity. “Jaime, I never said that. I said she would say yes, because I knew she would. I can only tell you so many times that it’s _you _she has feelings for before I lose my mind. Maybe I should have told you. Maybe the gesture of saving her from being embarrassed would have been enough for _her _to make the first move because you’re obviously too much of a coward to do it. But you told me that you didn’t trust me to talk to Brienne for you. You said I would hurt her. Not exactly compelling reasons to intervene.”

Jaime felt that anger again, but he also felt resignation. Because, well. That was _Cersei_. He knew exactly what she was like. Cersei saw it all on his face, the way she always did. She sneered at it, and she looked at him the same way she’d looked at him when he told her not to talk to Brienne, and then she marched off down the hallway with her head held high. She didn’t look conflicted at all in the face of Jaime’s fury, and he knew she wouldn’t ever be, no matter what he said.

* * *

And _yet_…Cersei does what she does best, and she controls the narrative in Brienne’s favor. Not so obviously that anyone will think she’s intervening for charitable reasons, or that she actually _cares _about Brienne. But Varys and Petyr Baelish spread their whispers, and Cersei and Taena talk loudly in circles of their friends about how pathetic the hockey team is, and it doesn’t take people very long to decide where their opinions should lie.

Not that she would ever admit it to him, but it’s probably meant to function as an apology. Jaime’s not sure it cuts it, but it comes close, at least. When he realizes how quickly she’s able to turn the opinion of the student body, he really _does _regret not asking for her help earlier.

When he sits down next to Brienne in chemistry and she actually _thanks him_, knowing that he must have had something to do with it, he can’t stop smiling.

He also can’t stop thinking about what Cersei said. About how he’s a coward.

Because he _is _a coward. He wishes he could get all righteously angry and be so offended by Cersei’s words that he would be compelled to do something brave and foolish just to prove her wrong. He imagines that that was probably at least a bit of her reasoning for saying it. But that isn’t how he reacts. He just…feels it. He _is _a coward. His cowardice has hurt Brienne, because if he had only asked, maybe they would have already been dating, and Hyle and the others never would have tried anything. _Maybe_. He should have protected her. He should have done _something_, and instead he did nothing, and Brienne was humiliated, and maybe it’s all his fault. _Coward._

He used to be brave, he thinks. When he was a kid, and he would just say and do whatever felt right. But that was when he and Cersei were a unit, and it was always so easy to feel like you were doing the right thing when there was someone else standing beside you, always telling you what to do.

It isn’t like Cersei’s _never _with him anymore. But they separated and grew apart, and now there’s a wedge between them because they have become different people, and maybe he used her as a crutch for too long. Maybe this weird anxiety about taking risks that probably don’t seem like risks to people on the outside is a symptom of removing that crutch and forcing himself to stand alone. At first, he thought it might just be a twin thing. Growing pains because they spent so much of their life together and then started spending more and more of it apart. But now he wonders if it’s just that he let Cersei make every decision for so long that being his own person is a genuine fucking _mystery _to him. Making his own choices is terrifying. Doing something not to make his family happy but to make _himself _happy is incomprehensible.

Telling Brienne Tarth that he has a massive crush on her and trusting that she won’t hurt him just feels _impossible_. He can’t shed this armor on his own. He wears it constantly, and he’s terrified of what will happen if he exposes that soft secret part of himself and lets her see what lies beneath it only to have her wrinkle up her nose and very politely, very _kindly _reject him.

* * *

Throughout the day, he does what he can, and he isn’t the only one. There has always been a little bit of inter-team rivalry with the hockey team, just as there is with any other sport, and the soccer team reacts to this bet as if it was a personal attack on all of them. There are no actual fights, but there’s a lot of insult-slinging and a lot of shoulder shoving and a lot of Arthur Dayne being extremely proud and angry on Brienne’s behalf.

Howland Reed, who is small and spry and usually quite good at staying out of peoples’ way, manages to knock the books out of the hands of like five hockey players throughout the day. Ned Stark stonewalls Mullendore by leaning against his locker and refusing to move until the bell has rung, making him unforgivably late to Ms. Tyrell’s class. Ms. Tyrell, who has apparently heard about the bet, takes the opportunity to roast him just about as badly as a teacher is _allowed _to roast a teenager before sending him down to principal’s office.

Cat, to no one’s surprise, strides up to each person confirmed to have been involved in the bet and verbally chastises them, threatening to tell their mothers about what they were going to do and reminding them that they’re lucky no one posted any proof on social media because their college acceptances can still be reversed. She demands they apologize personally to Brienne, and so browbeaten hockey players routinely approach Brienne throughout the day. Elia bristles whenever she sees one coming, and Jaime all but growls at them if he’s nearby at the time, but Brienne accepts their apologies with a grace that they don’t deserve. She doesn’t say anything to the effect of _forgiving _them, so at least there’s that, and her kindness makes people take her side even _more. _

People ask Jaime about the bet throughout the day. He wouldn’t have said that people gave his friendship with Brienne Tarth any thought, but everyone seems to know. It makes him annoyed, almost angry, because he remembers what Brienne said about how people must look at them, and he knows now that she’s likely right. These people who are so concerned and smiley and say _isn’t it just awful_ probably think Brienne’s the one following him around hopelessly, pining and anxious, dreaming of working up the courage to make a fucking move, and he doesn’t want anything to do with them. But he makes sure to smile at them and tell them that Brienne’s his friend and that anyone who hurts her will have to answer to him.

“She’s practically family,” he starts saying. “Me and Cersei and Tyrion all care about her so much. We’re all really angry about this whole thing.”

Brienne will probably roll her eyes when she hears about it, but he doesn’t care. If he has to be a fucking Lannister, at least he can use it for _good_.

* * *

Elia stays after school to watch their soccer practice, doing her homework on the bleachers and cheering whenever he and Brienne do something exciting. Brienne has been glowing since chemistry class, and she glows all through practice, too. Relieved and grateful to everyone on the team for sticking up for her. Jaime’s still furious it happened, but at least something good came out of it: she knows now how much everyone on the team cares about her. She’s more open with them, laughing her loud, glorious laugh and making tentative jokes. Reaching out in ways that she wouldn’t have before. She smiles over at Jaime often, as if incredulous, as if she can’t believe how happy she is despite everything, and it makes Jaime smile helplessly back.

When practice is over, Elia comes up to him with her bag slung over her shoulder.

“You’re still staying late today, right?” she asks.

“That’s the plan.”

“Brienne asked me if it was _okay_,” Elia answers. She rolls her eyes a little. “Jaime, she’s so afraid of me thinking that she likes you. I can’t see why she would be unless she really did.”

“I can think of plenty of reasons,” Jaime mutters, but he knows that Elia has a point. Brienne is chatting with Arthur down at the other end of the field, smiling briefly at something the captain says. “It’s not like I would be able to say anything _now_. Even if we weren’t supposed to be happily dating…”

“_Supposed _to be!” Elia exclaims in mock outrage, grinning at him.

“It wouldn’t be the right time,” he finishes.

“You’re right. I think she needs a friend more than she needs anything else right now.”

“Well, I’m good at that, I think. Being her friend.”

“You are,” Elia confirms. She stands on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “I’m going to call Oberyn. I bullied him into keeping his phone on so that I could get a ride home today.”

Turns out Oberyn _doesn’t _have his phone on, but Arthur offers to drop Elia off, after doing an odd, bro-ish sort of thing where he “checks in” with Jaime to make sure it’s okay. Jaime waves him off, grimacing a little, wondering vaguely why people are always so _weird _when you start dating someone.

Brienne’s ready for him by the time he finally starts over, her hands on her hips, legs set slightly apart as she watches him approach. He’s still just slightly breathless and a little sore from practice, but jogging out to her feels like getting into bed after a long day. That feeling of muscles unwinding, body sagging into the mattress. Safety and comfort and _home_.

Despite her happiness during practice, her game is off now that he’s the only one with her. She’s tense and unhappy about the bet still, he can tell. Usually when they pass the ball back and forth to each other as they run down the field, they’re basically psychically linked. Brienne’s always favored roaming the right side of the field, coming up from her defensive position to cross the ball to him in his forward position. They have to be fast on their feet and they have to always know where the other is. But today, Brienne misses more often than she usually does. He can tell she’s frustrated, but he knows she won’t like him being too gentle about it, so he isn’t. He mocks her when she misses, the way he would on a normal day. Still friendly. Still _them_. He pushes her harder when she makes mistakes. He runs faster, kicks the ball further, forces her to step up her game and focus on him instead of focusing on what happened.

By the end of it, they both just lay back on the grass beside each other, chests heaving. Brienne’s laughing and groaning at once, annoyed with him, but he knows she feels better. 

“Thank you,” she says finally. “For today. I needed this.”

“Any time,” he answers. He sits up so that he can force her to meet his eyes. “I mean it. I could run drills with you all day.”

“Not physically, clearly,” Brienne drawls, and he kicks her thigh with the toe of his cleat, making her laugh. “I’m just saying. You’re the one who dropped first.”

“Just give me like two minutes,” Jaime protests, and Brienne laughs again. She sits up too, so they’re facing each other, both of them with their elbows on their knees, legs crossed.

“I’m sorry I freaked out and stopped extra practices the way I did,” she says. “I was trying to be a good friend, but I know I hurt you.”

“It’s all right,” Jaime demurs, but Brienne continues, thoughtful, looking at him with an odd sort of awareness like she’s seeing him clearly for the first time.

“I think sometimes I forget that I _can _hurt you,” she says.

It’s almost funny, because Jaime’s pretty sure that she’s the person with _the _most power to hurt him, and she has no idea.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“You’re…you. You’re Jaime Lannister. You’re Cersei’s brother.”

“I mean, it’s not like we’re _robots_,” Jaime laughs. “Of course you can hurt me. You slide-tackled me during practice earlier and I’m going to have like eight bruises.”

“You’re such a baby. And you know what I mean.”

“I don’t. I’m an idiot, remember.”

“Stop. You’re not an idiot,” Brienne sighs. All sincere like that. It’s hard for him to look at too closely, so he looks down at his hands as he picks at the grass. “I just mean…I don’t know if it’s just because you’re good at keeping up that façade in a way I’m not, but sometimes I forget that you’re capable of being hurt by someone like me.”

“Someone like you?”

“It’s just hard to stop looking at things from the outside.”

“Is this about the way we look again?” Jaime asks, stomach sinking. He barely got out of that conversation alive last time. He’s not sure he could handle another one without telling her exactly what he’d like to do to her. Especially not after seeing her in that _dress. _

“Yeah. Kind of. Not _just _that. I wish you wouldn’t make me say it, because it sounds so _lame_. But just…I heard Petyr Baelish saying something one time…”

“Seven hells.”

“No, I know. Fuck him. But it was true. Just think of it like, if school was a ladder, and people were on higher rungs depending on things like how many friends they have or how attractive they are, you’d be at the top. You realize that, right?”

“I thought we established that I’m a friendless loser.”

“You know you aren’t. If anything, having only three friends makes you mysterious and cool. You’ve dated Cat Tully and Elia Martell, who are both the nicest and the prettiest people in school, aside from your own sister, and you can’t exactly date _her_. You used to be an asshole, but you aren’t anymore. People talk about you. You’re just…above everyone else.”

“I don’t _feel _above everyone else,” Jaime says.

“That doesn’t change the fact that you are.”

He’s frustrated, he realizes. Just like last time they had this conversation. Not _angry_ like that time, when she was trying to pull away and he was trying to tell her that he was _hurt_, but frustrated in the way he gets when he can’t think of a way to tell someone something because they’re so sure they already know the answers. Jaime’s never been very good with words. He’s used to feeling like there’s something inside him that he can’t quite get out. But it’s particularly bad when it’s Brienne, because he wants her to understand him better than anyone. 

“Will it be different when we go to college?” he asks. He hates the sort of plaintive note in his voice. It feels far too obvious. “Or will there be a ladder there, too?”

Brienne considers it, grimacing.

“I don’t think there’s ever _not _going to be a ladder,” she admits quietly. “I’m not trying to…Jaime, I’ll always care about you. I’ll always be your friend. I’ll always _try_. I just wanted to explain to you why I sometimes…I don’t know. Push you away, or forget to take your feelings into consideration. I hate when I do it. I know it’s shitty.”

“No,” Jaime sighs. “No, it’s okay. I’m glad you told me. It’s like you said before. I can’t see it. I wish I could. It would probably be easier if I could. But I trust you. I know you’re not trying to do it on purpose.”

“I’m not,” Brienne promises. “I know it’s unfair, and I’m sorry. And I’m trying.”

“I’m trying too,” Jaime says. Later, he’ll pinpoint this as the exact moment he should have stopped talking. “I wish you could see you like I see you. I wish you could see that you’re at the very top of _my _ladder.”

That startles an unexpected laugh out of her, and even though he hadn’t been _trying _to make her laugh, he still has to grin a little at the look on her face.

“That’s not how the ladder thing works,” she says. “It’s not like everyone has their own ladder. It’s a _collective _ladder.”

Jaime rolls his eyes and flops back onto his back.

“So _you _can come up with a stupid metaphor for popularity, and you can use it to explain why you forget sometimes that I’m a human person with human feelings, because I’m just apparently so good looking and wonderful that everything must be all just…_great _for me, or something…”

“I mean, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all, but…”

“But _I _can’t come up with a similar one just to tell you how much I like you?” He grins up at the sky when she goes quiet. He hardly knows what he’s saying. Just that he can’t _take _it anymore. “When you first moved here, you were probably way at the bottom. Not because I hated you. I just didn’t know you. I made fun of you. Probably because that was what boys on the top of the _collective ladder _were supposed to do. They were supposed to make fun of girls who just moved here and who were taller than everyone else and who looked like boys with long hair. Is that about right?”

“What are you trying to prove, exactly?” Brienne asks through gritted teeth. He wants to look at her, but he _can’t_, so he just waves his arm vaguely at the sky and continues, his other arm tucked behind his head like he’s relaxed and not shaking with excess adrenaline.

“It’s _your _thing. I’m just adapting it. So, high school, right? I started dating Cat, and you were friends with Cat, so you moved up on my ladder a bit. I know Cat and I were basically just makeout buddies, but I really did love her. And you made her smile more than anyone else. You were always protecting her from other people, not that she needed it. But you were there anyway. My ladder isn’t very big. I’m a very easy person to please. So let’s say you moved up, oh, three rungs when I was dating Cat. A big jump, but you’ve got such long legs, so I’m not surprised.”

“Jaime…” Brienne’s tone is hesitant. She seems to hear the sort of manic edge in his voice. Frustration and anger and desperation and a _need _for her to understand. He sits up, finally, one leg bent in front of him, and he meets her eyes. Big and beautiful and concerned, just like they were last year when she helped him off the field and he abruptly fell in love with her over the course of the next day and a half.

“Then you joined soccer, and we all _knew _you’d make a great centerback, because you’re basically a wall. But you wanted to play rightback, and you wanted to _roam_. You were so fucking fast, and you were so accurate that you moved up a whole other rung just based on that alone. I am always loyal to the people on the team, and I was so impressed by everything. By your skills and by the fact that you never let anyone scare you off. I know plenty of people tried, those first few weeks.”

“You never did,” Brienne manages, and he smiles.

“No,” he says. “And I never would. Not even if you weren’t _you_. You earned your place on our team, and I was going to honor that. Two more rungs.”

“You can just call the ladder thing stupid and move on, you know,” Brienne reminds him, rolling her eyes.

“Then I was hurt, and you appeared out of a crowd of players,” Jaime says, and Brienne looks almost as if she has stopped breathing. “And you helped me off the field. You were there when I was in pain. No one _else _was. They were too busy arguing and getting upset, but you. You helped me, and then later, when I was gone, you made sure that Hoat paid for what he had done. I don’t know how many more rungs there could be left. I don’t actually know how many rungs ladders have. But you climbed the rest of them.”

“It’s what anyone would have done,” Brienne says.

“It isn’t, and you know that,” Jaime replies. Brienne stands suddenly, shaking, looking as if he has accused her of something. He hadn’t meant to. This was _his_ confession! He scrambles to his feet, still looking at her, not allowing her to look away. “Brienne, I’m trying to tell you how much I care about you. I know what you’re saying. I know what you mean. But I don’t care about Petyr’s stupid ladder. I care about _you_. When I heard about what those kids on the hockey team were going to do, I wanted to kill them, for hurting _you_. You’re the best person I know, and the thought that someone would try and tear you down for that is…” He looks up at her, _trying _to will her to understand. She’s still staring at him. She isn’t trying to run. He needs to _say _it. “It’s true. You’re the best person I know. I was so fucking relieved when I realized we’d both being going to Stormlands together. I was so happy when you agreed to be my chemistry partner. And when you told me you’d help me get back in form after my injury, I couldn’t stop smiling for like the rest of that week. I knew I was back in form _weeks _before you stopped the practices, but I just wanted to spend time with you. I wish you’d let me beat up every kid on the hockey team. I would do it.”

She looks away, her jaw clenching, and he knows that he has said something wrong. Something that lost her.

“I don’t need you to beat them up for me, Jaime,” she points out, spreading her arms helplessly, gesturing to herself. “Remember? That’s the problem.” Her voice catches. His heart stops. She’s _crying_. “I can beat them all up myself, and that’s exactly what everyone expects, because I’m enormous and ugly and a fucking _joke_.”

“You’re not!” Jaime insists, following her as she turns away, trying to get her to meet his eyes as she tries to hide the tears he’s already spotted. “You’re not a joke. You’re not ugly. Yes you’re _tall_, but that’s a good thing! I like that you’re tall! You can hang all our posters when we get an apartment together! You can hide things from me on the top of the fridge!”

“Please stop trying to make me laugh,” Brienne says, shoving his shoulder slightly and still turning away from him. “I appreciate it, but it’s been a long day and I just…”

“I think you’re beautiful,” he blurts. She rounds on him, and he can see how blotchy and red she’s gotten from holding back her tears, and she looks briefly disgusted by him.

“_What_?” she asks.

“I think you’re beautiful. I like that you’re taller than me. I like that you’re strong. I don’t know who told you that big lips are bad, because they aren’t. I like the way you always bite your lip when you’re nervous. It’s fucking _adorable. _You looked so good the other day in that black dress.”

“Jaime, stop,” she says.

“You _did_,” he promises. “I’m not just saying it.”

She shakes her head, and she takes a few moments to look at her shoes, and he knows that she’s gearing up to say something. He hopes it isn’t anything _too _devastating, but he has a feeling it will be.

“I know you think you’re helping,” she says, and _yeah_, she’s about to say something devastating. “But you aren’t. You’re trying to be a good friend, but you’re lying to me, and that’s…”

“_Lying_!”

“Jaime, I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. Please. I know you’re trying to help. But it doesn’t _mean _anything when you say it.”

“If this is about the fucking ladder thing again…”

“It’s about Elia!” Brienne practically shouts. She’s backing away from him, looking at him with a look of almost-hatred. She’s so angry that he’s making her say it. “Your girlfriend is _beautiful_, Jaime. She’s small and perfect and _beautiful_.”

“Elia has nothing to do with it.”

“Elia has _everything _to do with it,” she says. She’s incredulous now, like he’s a total idiot for not understanding, and maybe he is. “Boys like you don’t look at girls like me. You don’t think we’re pretty. You don’t _like_ that we’re taller than you. Boys like you look at girls like Elia Martell. She’s beautiful, and she’s kind, and you don’t have to stand on your toes just to hug her. _That’s_ what you want. You can’t just lie to me and try to make me feel better about myself because I _know _what you want. You’ve shown everyone what you want.”

“None of that means that I don’t think you’re beautiful,” Jaime insists. “Or that I don’t love you.”

That was a mistake to say, and he knows it immediately. He could double down. Tell her that he isn’t dating Elia. Tell her _everything. _He could tell her that he means “love” in the same way he loves all his friends. He could…

Her face scrunches up tight like she’s about to either start sobbing or spit on him, but she swallows it back and doesn’t do either of those things. She looks at him as if she has just realized something horrible about him.

“You think this is what I need to hear, don’t you?” she asks. She’s rapidly getting furious. “You’re just like the rest of them. You think—gods, Jaime. You think that I’m _pining away_ for you like the big, ugly joke that I am, and you think you’re being _kind _by lying to me about it.”

“That’s not what I think at _all_! I’m…”

“You think that you just have to smile and flirt a little and suddenly the ugly girl is going to just…fall in love with you because it’s not like she has any other options! She’s just waiting around for some pretty boy to throw a few empty compliments her way and that will make her forget that he used to call her ugly every day in middle school!” When Jaime doesn’t answer, stricken by that assumption and by what she must think of him, Brienne laughs. It’s hollow and horrified and _disgusted_, and he doesn’t have the words to undo this. She’s farther away from him than she’s ever been, and he wonders how many rungs he just moved down on her stupid fucking personal ladder, because she isn’t listening. She _can’t _listen. He can see it, his words meaning _nothing _to her because she has already convinced herself of the truth, and nothing he says now will fix it. It’s not the type of thing that words can repair without a little time, but he can’t just leave her to hurt like this.

“Brienne…” he tries.

“I’m not in love with you, Jaime,” she says. Her voice wavers, but her eyes don’t. They bore into him, hating him and hurt by him, and he hears the breath that shudders out of her when she says it. “I don’t have some stupid, hopeless crush on you. Not every ugly girl does.”

“I know,” he manages, his voice hoarse. _I’m not in love with you. _“I know that.”

“Do you?” she asks, incredulous. Not believing him.

“Yes,” he says. His voice is too quiet. _I’m not in love with you. _

“Then please, _please _just…stop. I don’t want your pity. I don’t…”

“I don’t _pity _you. I…”

“You’re being cruel, Jaime,” she says, and Jaime stops again, frustrated, turning away from her at last. His wrist hurts, oddly. A throbbing wrongness. His stomach hurts, too. “I know you’re not doing it on purpose.” _I’m not in love with you. _“But you’re being cruel. Even Hyle never pretended... I’m sorry.”

“I’m being cruel, but _you’re _sorry?” he manages, choked, and Brienne seems so confused to see his tears when he turns back to look at her. Gods, he’s such a fucking idiot. _I’m not in love with you. _

“I’m just…I know…” she starts, stammering, looking at him with incomprehension. He turns away to wipe his eyes, swiping furiously at them with the backs of his hands. “I know you’re trying something. You probably don’t mean to be cruel.”

“Probably,” he scoffs.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“I don’t know,” Brienne admits. Her own voice cracks. “Why are you _crying?_”

“Why are _you_?” he demands.

This is the stupidest moment of his entire life.

“I’m not,” Brienne says, obviously fighting back tears, rendering the whole thing somehow stupider. Jaime rolls his eyes, and they burn, and he throws up his hands. “I’m sorry,” she says again.

“Fucking…_gods_,” Jaime seethes, turning back around to her. “Stop apologizing if you think _I’m _the one being an asshole!”

“You _are _the one being an asshole!”

“I tell you you’re beautiful and that I love you and you yell at me about being a stuck-up prick who thinks you’re obsessed with me! I never thought that. _Trust _me. I never thought that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Trust you?”

“I don’t know. Trust me, because we’re meant to be friends and you think I’m…”

“I think you’re trying to _help_,” Brienne reminds him, and his shoulders sag.

“Fine. You trust me. I’m only being a fucking monster by accident.”

“I never said monster.”

“If what you think of me was true, I would be,” Jaime insists, and Brienne just stares at him.

_I’m not in love with you_.

“I need to go,” she says. Her voice is still shaking. He wishes that she could understand. He wishes she knew _anything. _He wishes he could go back to twenty minutes ago and drag himself off the field to keep himself from thinking it was ever a good idea to open his idiot mouth and speak_. _Hells, maybe bring the time machine back a few years ago and have his father send him off to boarding school the way Tywin wanted.

He watches her leave, and he sees her wiping at her eyes and trying to control her sobs until she’s back inside and safe _from him_, and his heart breaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact about me: one time in high school my friend and I were arguing, and the argument stopped because we both started roasting each other for crying in the middle of the argument like a couple of dummies. I mean that's not what happens here, but that's what that part is based on.


	6. don't say I didn't love you love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all right here's the apology chapter. And I don't mean like an apology happens, i mean this is my apology to yOU for last chapter!

It’s almost impossible to sleep that night.

Brienne knows that Jaime wasn’t trying to be cruel, and she knows that he isn’t going to do anything cruel to her just because she told him off and called him out. But when he sees her next, he’s going to _know_. He’s going to know because she as good as told him, and he’s going to know that she’s exactly what she has been so afraid to be seen as: the ugly girl with the crush on the beautiful boy. She saw the look on his face when she lied to him. _I’m not in love with you_. She saw the look of understanding, resignation. _Pity_, maybe. He _knows_, now. There was no other way to interpret that expression.

She shouldn’t have let him get to her. She knows what he’s like. Of course he was oblivious and didn’t take the ladder thing seriously. Jaime is a good person, and he’s a good friend, and she has no doubt that he really did try to understand, but he was never really going to be able to. How could he? He blunders through life being beautiful and fucking up and being forgiven by people because they love him _because_ he’s beautiful and _because_ he has the effortless Lannister charm that doesn’t seem to know _how _to fuck up permanently. Even in the middle of accusing him of lying to her, she mostly just felt guilty for making him look at her like that, like she’d punched him. She shouldn’t have said anything at all. She doesn’t know why she wanted him to understand so badly. She should have just been content with the level of friendship they had. She shouldn’t have tried to drag him into something deeper where she felt the need to explain her actions. They have existed in this space that’s _good_. This space where they care about each other and like each other and enjoy spending time together but they aren’t accountable to each other like that. She should never have said the thing about not always remembering that she can hurt him. Why is she always such an _idiot _when it comes to him?

The worst part is that it was him_. _If it was someone else, like Ned, say, who thought that he should lie to her and tell her how beautiful she was to him, it wouldn't have hurt nearly as badly as it did from Jaime. It would have hurt vaguely in the way that a white lie will always hurt if you know the reasons for it. It would have been mortifying to know that it was something Ned thought she needed to hear. But it wouldn’t be this empty heartache. She thinks she might love Jaime. She might _love _him. And he thought that she was so pathetic that she needed empty, fake validation from him.

He probably thought it was safe because of Elia. He has a girlfriend, so he can say whatever he wants, because it’s not like Brienne’s going to mistake it for a genuine pass at her. And if she _did _decide to read into it and be exactly as pathetic as he probably thinks she is, he would just be able to say something sweet like _if I wasn’t with Elia…_ knowing that Brienne would never fight it.

She can’t decide if she’s more hurt or angry or sorry that she yelled at him and made him cry even though she knows he was only trying to help. She can’t decide if she wants to yell at him some more or avoid him entirely or apologize. The thought of seeing him in school tomorrow is _torture_.

Around three in the morning, though, she wakes up. And it feels…well. Not _good_, and not even really _okay_, but almost cathartic. Like getting a good cry out and then feeling like you’re finally able to face your feelings, now that most of them have been emptied out of you. A blank slate to start anew on.

It was a bad situation, and she still isn’t sure what she’s going to do about it. But she’s almost _glad _that it happened. She’s glad that he knows. She’s glad that whatever choices she makes will be based on the truth of her unfortunate feelings and not the lie she was trying to sell him. She hopes it doesn’t destroy their friendship completely, and she hopes that he’ll at least be understanding about it if she decides that she needs some space, but she doesn’t feel as tortured by it as she did when she went to sleep last night. It’s not as bad as the bet. It’s not as bad as plenty of horrible things that people have said to her over the years. When she sees him in the morning, she’s sure that she’ll know what to do, and she feels confident in herself for once; it will be the right choice.

* * *

Except, well, _Jaime _makes the choice for her.

When she gets to chemistry class, he’s sitting with Bronn. Lollys Stokeworth has taken his place at her table. Kind, gentle Lollys who needs more help than Jaime ever did but who is so inoffensively sweet that Brienne knows the choice must have been a careful one. He doesn’t look back at her once. He doesn’t say anything to her. He is a neutral, blank space. Brienne can’t decide if she’s offended by it or hurt by it. She can’t decide if he’s trying to avoid her for her sake or for his own.

Ms. Tyrell doesn’t ask any questions, just rolls her eyes and gets on with teaching, well used to high school students and their shit.

Elia makes eye contact several times, and she looks nervous and bites her lip and fidgets in her seat, and Brienne spends the whole class period wondering what Jaime told her.

After class, Jaime is the first one out the door, but Elia lingers until Lollys is gone, and then she sidles up to Brienne’s table.

“Is it okay if we talk?” she asks. She’s so hesitant. It hurts almost as much as Jaime’s avoidance to see her so nervous about it. “I know you’re angry with Jaime, but I hope it doesn’t change things with us.”

Brienne had been so ready to be on the defensive. It’s a bit of whiplash to hear Elia say that. _Angry with Jaime_. Like it’s so simple. Like it’s _true_, even. Brienne might be angry with Jaime, but it’s not a _definite_. She isn’t sure. That’s the whole problem.

But of course it’s only when being so gently accused of it that she realizes how untrue it is. No, she isn’t _angry_. Hurt, maybe. A bit out of sorts. _Annoyed. _But not angry in a way that should make Jaime flee the room to avoid her, and not angry in a way that should make Elia afraid to speak to her.

“I’m not angry with Jaime,” she says, deflating. “And you didn’t do anything. Of course it doesn’t change anything.”

“Oh, good,” Elia breathes, smiling. So genuinely relieved. Brienne feels horribly awkward in the silence that follows.

“I don’t know what he told you…” she starts. She’s never fished for information in her life, but she’s pretty sure that’s exactly what she’s doing now. If Elia realizes it, she doesn’t show it. She smiles sadly at her, shrugging one shoulder.

“Nothing about what happened, but enough for me to get the idea. _You_ know Jaime. It’s a bit doom and gloom at the moment. _I fucked up, I fucked everything up, she hates me_. He doesn’t really do middle ground, our Jaime.”

_Your Jaime_, Brienne thinks, pathetically, but she blessedly manages not to say that part aloud. She’s grateful to Jaime for not telling Elia anything, even if she _is _annoyed at the unnecessary drama. _Hates _him? How the hells is _that _the impression he walked away with?

“His intentions were good. He just said the wrong thing,” she says. That doesn’t _nearly _cover it, but if Jaime was charitable enough not to tell his girlfriend that Brienne’s plainly in love with him, she’s not going to squander that gift. Elia only smiles.

“That seems to be a common theme with him,” she says. “I know this may be a bit…too soon. But I had already planned on asking you and Cat, and I think you could use the pick-me-up more than ever. Would you like to stay at my house tonight? A proper sleepover with the three of us? I’ve never really had one before, and Doran suggested it. It seemed like it might be nice.” She smiles, and she looks terribly unsure and self-conscious. Brienne thinks about how she told Jaime that sometimes she forgets that he can be hurt by her because she has always thought of him as being above her. The same has always been true of Elia, and yet Brienne knows in this moment that it would be so _easy_ to hurt her. Elia is taking a risk, asking Brienne over, asking for more of a friendship than they’ve shared so far. She looks nervous, but she’s asking anyway. Putting herself out there. Brienne’s certainly never been brave enough to do it. Every acquaintance she’s managed to turn into a friend has been the one to approach. Cat, Ned, Howland, Jaime. All of them reaching and reaching until she tentatively reached back and allowed them to pull her along. What’s it like to be able to reach out for something you want? What’s it like to have that confidence?

“That sounds amazing,” Brienne reassures her, and Elia smiles. “What time should I be there?”

* * *

Jaime doesn’t show up at all to lunch period, and Elia says he’s getting extra help for English class. Cat exchanges a questioning look with Brienne, but Brienne just avoids her gaze and turns the conversation towards Elia’s sleepover, which at least distracts the other two girls even if it doesn’t make Brienne feel any better. When she heads to English class, Jaime has once again switched seats, and this time it’s Taena Merryweather who takes his place. She looks over once at Brienne, smiling, but it’s sharp and a little unfriendly. Still, she doesn’t say anything vaguely mean like she usually does, and Brienne knows that means that Jaime asked her not to.

At practice, Jaime is even worse. Because he’s just…Jaime. He’s himself, without the annoyances and flair and constant attempts to make her laugh. He’s serious and focused when Arthur is talking. He puts an absurd amount of effort into everything. And the worst part is that he doesn’t avoid her at all. He calls out to her when he has to. When Arthur tells them to partner up for passing, he jogs up to her immediately, like he always does. Hesitant, but he looks at her for permission, and when she nods, he nods back. When he misses a pass horribly, he throws his head back and laughs like he always does, and he says _nice one, Brie! _as he runs after it. He’s Jaime, but without the extra frills she has become used to during their friendship. It’s all wrong, somehow, like some alien creature zipped down in the middle of the night last night and took Jaime and left a mostly-okay hybrid replacement. Good enough to fool everyone else on the team, but not good enough to fool Brienne. Not good enough to fool someone who loves him.

She’s been writing and rewriting and rehearsing apologies in her head all night, just in case _apologize_ ended up being the chosen course of action. She’s also been readying more yelling, or at least more rational explanations, just in case he’s interested in hearing what upset her so much without both of them for some reason crying about it this time. But _this_, she can’t do anything with. She thinks of Elia, standing there in chemistry class, nervous and uncertain, still finding the courage to come up and talk to her. She should do that. Jaime is her _friend. _They’re going to college together next year, and they’re both going to be playing soccer. She needs to mend this rift before it becomes a full split.

Elia’s bravery isn’t the same as the bravery Brienne would need to have to actually do that, of course. Elia isn’t in love with her. But she wishes she had that kind of strength. She can lift as well as any of the boys on the team, and she can run faster than them too. But she’s never had that quiet kind of strength. The conviction that allows people to stand and face their fears. She has always been envious of it, and she is particularly envious now.

Jaime once again is the first person to head out once practice is done, and though she tries to call after him once, he doesn’t even pause. She’s not sure if he even heard her: her voice was weak and uncertain when she said his name. Still she’s forced to wonder if he would have stopped if he had.

Arthur spots her as she’s packing up her things.

“No practice with Lannister today?” he asks. “I thought you guys were getting back into it.”

Brienne hardly knows what she says. She makes some excuse and then escapes to the locker room, alone.

* * *

When she heads to Elia’s for the night, Brienne meets and is charmed by Elia’s responsible, college-aged brother Doran, who clearly adores his little sister. He opens the door with a big smile and obvious pleasure that Elia is having friends over, greeting Brienne with too much enthusiasm, like her father does whenever Cat comes to the house. She had already met their younger brother Oberyn, of course, who is a grade below them, but his presence is always a bit of a surprise. After he kisses her hand and maintains eye contact for long enough to leave her blushing, she’s allowed to head down into the finished basement, which has an enormous screen on one wall and a lovely viewing area that’s piled with comfortable pillows. Cat is already here, lounging around in a pretty nightgown as Elia scrolls through their movie options. Both girls squeal happily when Brienne makes her appearance.

She feels awkward and stupid with her sleeping bag and pillow tucked under her arm, but Elia just takes them gently and then leads Brienne over to a comfortable spot where she quickly understands, with a kind of full-bodied relief, that she doesn’t _need _to be embarrassed. She’s safe here.

* * *

Elia, to Brienne’s complete lack of surprise, turns out to be exceptionally good at throwing slumber parties. Brienne’s never been to one before, so it’s not like she has a lot of data to fall back on, but it’s _nice_. They put movies on in the background—these adventurous Dornish romance movies that all take place in some vague past time-period and are all _extremely cheesy_—but the volume is quiet enough that they can talk over them, and that’s exactly what they do. Cat is always quietly informed about all the latest gossip due to her weird, respectful non-friendship with Cersei Lannister, and she drops a few innocuous bombs that make Brienne and Elia gasp. Brienne likes Cat’s gossip, because it’s never cruel or petty, and she never tells any secrets that are truly terrible. There’s always such a sense of it being _just for fun. _Elia appreciates it too, Brienne knows. She probably wouldn’t like cruel gossip, either.

Brienne would have said that she wouldn’t get much out of a traditional sleepover, but even the silly, cliché stuff is so much more fun than she would have expected. Cat shows Brienne and Elia how to braid their hair in the crowned style that Cat sometimes wears. They look up makeup tutorials and show Brienne how to tell how much is too much. They even paint their nails and read celebrity gossip sites, and Brienne _enjoys it_.

“I’ve never had a group of friends like this,” Elia admits quietly as they sip some of the non-alcoholic cocktails Doran made for them. “Usually my close friends are all in different groups, so I never thought of getting everyone together at once. So I thought I should use this opportunity to make my first sleepover very cliché.”

“It’s nice!” Cat assures her. “I used to have them with my sister all the time, because my father never wanted us to have anyone stay over. We thought we were being so clever. We’d pretend not to know each other very well and then ask each other questions about the people we were pretending to be. Sometimes my brother Edmure insisted on joining us, and we would all pretend he was a new exchange student.”

She laughs, and Brienne is glad that neither of them ask her if _she’s_ ever been to many sleepovers. She thinks they can probably tell the answer.

She likes it, though. Her fight with Jaime and that throbbing fear of its consequences are still inside her, and she knows that if she was left to her own devices tonight, she would probably be a mess. She’s glad she wasn’t too afraid to say yes to this.

* * *

It’s hours later, after their third movie, when they’re all starting to get tired and a little silly, and Elia sits up abruptly from where she has been reclining against the pillows. Her hair is still half braided from earlier, with the other half spilling out in beautiful brown coils. One strap of her tank top falls off her shoulder, and Brienne for the first time tonight feels this horrible jealousy squirming inside her. It isn’t even related to Jaime. It’s just…_her_. Elia. She’s so beautiful and so kind and she has two brothers who are alive and who love her enough to make delicious cocktails without being asked. Brienne wonders what it’s like to be her. To wake up every morning and look in the mirror and see _that_.

“I would really like to tell you two something,” Elia says in a voice that’s partly nervous but partly mischievous, like she wants to sound coy but isn’t sure how it’s going to be received.

“You can tell us anything,” Brienne says, to set her at ease. Cat nods, sitting up eagerly and scooting closer, feeling the hesitance and also knowing that what Elia’s hesitating over is probably an interesting secret. It isn’t that Cat’s a _gossip_, really, but she likes knowing things. Her favorite thing is to be in possessions of two halves of a secret so that she can look knowingly at everyone when things start unraveling.

“Anything,” she promises. “We won’t tell a soul.”

Elia hesitates some more, looking between Cat and Brienne, and then finally she sucks in a deep, sharp breath.

“Jaime and I aren’t dating,” she says.

Brienne’s first thought is, of course, that Elia and Jaime are just hooking up without labeling it, which seems like an odd thing to be so insistent on revealing during a sleepover with friends, but then Cat starts to laugh. She flops back on the pillows, and she covers her face with her hands, her laugh turning into a loud groan of disbelief.

“Oh _gods_, of course. Oh, it makes so much sense. It’s so Jaime. Let me guess: he offered to pretend to date you so that people would stop being horrible about Rhaegar?”

And.

Oh.

Wait.

_Oh. _

Brienne stares at Elia, who’s laughing with Cat now, nodding, both of them saying words that make sense only _technically_.

“It was actually Cersei who came up with it.”

“Of _course _it was. When she’s not using her mind for evil, she can be a genius.”

“But he was very sweet. He was the first person I told, because he found me crying about it in the hall, and he was so good about it. He’s a wonderful friend to have.”

“He _is_. He was a good actual boyfriend, too, for what it was. Have to imagine he’s a pretty good fake one.”

“Oh, he’s been amazing. I just felt so sorry, lying to you and Brienne. I know it’s been weighing on Jaime’s conscience, too. He and Cersei wanted it to be a secret, to protect my reputation. You know, nothing more embarrassing than _this _coming out. The only thing more pathetic than a cheated-on girlfriend is a girl who feels like she has to pretend to be dating someone, probably.”

Elia’s sad little laugh breaks Brienne out of her confusion, and she forces herself to smile. Elia meets her eyes, and her answering expression is soft and understanding. Brienne can’t tell if it’s purposeful or not. She can’t tell if Elia decided to tell them this secret because she really _did _feel guilty about lying to them for so long or if it’s because she knows exactly why Jaime and Brienne fought. Brienne thinks she should maybe feel more embarrassed at the idea, but she isn’t. She’s…she doesn’t know _what _she is.

She just keeps thinking back to the field, and the way he had looked at her so intently. Following her every time she tried to turn away. Stubbornly refusing to understand that he was hurting her. Maybe he _did _understand. Maybe he wasn’t refusing to leave her alone because he was an oblivious asshole but because he _meant _it. There had been something so confusing and odd in the way that he was looking at her, in the way that he was speaking. He had started _crying_, and even though she dismissed it as him being empathetic and sorry for hurting her, now it fizzles in her brain.

_I tell you you’re beautiful and that I love you and you yell at me about being a stuck-up prick who thinks you’re obsessed with me! I never thought that. _Trust_ me. I never thought that._

She had even asked him, because the way he emphasized _trust me_ was so small and sad and inwardly directed, and she hadn’t understood.

It doesn’t make sense. It’s impossible. There’s no way the world would make a joke so cruel as to make Jaime Lannister actually interested in her. There’s no way the world would make him at all confused or uncertain about her feelings. She thought they were obvious. Why wouldn’t he just ask her? How could he possibly think she would say no?

She thinks of his annoyance and his confusion at her description of the ladder. That stupid popularity ladder that Petyr Baelish started going on and on about once when Cat told them she was dating Ned Stark and Petyr had gotten all creepy and annoying about it because he thought _he _should be the one dating her. Not to validate _anything_ that kid said, but Brienne had always thought of it as a tidy explanation. Jaime was just…above her. He shouldn’t be nervous about asking her anything. _She _should be the nervous one. She was the ugly one. She was the one who no one else was interested in. Why would he ever doubt?

She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t understand, but she knows that there’s _something. _It’s like the knowledge of him not actually dating Elia is a key that has unlocked something. A door to another room. It’s dimly lit, and she can’t find the light switch, but she can see something in the darkness. It’s not entirely black.

It should still feel impossible. By all metrics she understands, by all _logic _she understands, a boy like Jaime Lannister isn’t going to like a girl like her. Not _sincerely_. Not as anything more than a teammate and a friend. But Elia’s expression is too purposeful. Her decision to spill this secret _now _is too purposeful. Elia is sweet, and she is kind, and she is too nice to let two of her friends suffer when it’s within her power to do something to help them.

Brienne feels, suddenly, tears springing to her eyes. As if she needed to feel more pathetic. But it’s a _good _feeling. Being looked out for. Being looked after.

“You’re not pathetic,” Brienne manages to say finally. “You’re _wonderful_.”

And Elia laughs, and she’s dabbing at her own eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, and then Cat is saying _aww_ and leaning in and pulling them both into an enormous hug.

* * *

Cat falls asleep not long after that, cocooning herself in a bunch of pillows and blankets until only the top of her red hair is visible.

“It’s not really my place to say,” Elia says, wasting _no _time, propped up on her elbow on the pillow beside Brienne’s. “And maybe I shouldn’t be breaking his confidence like this? But Jaime likes you quite a bit.”

“I knew that already,” Brienne says. She doesn’t think she’s ever been _sly _in her life, but she knows there’s something almost sly about her tone. She doesn’t want to ask outright what form that _liking _exists in, because she thinks she knows. She thinks she understands. But she isn’t _sure_, and she needs to be sure before she removes a single piece of her armor.

“Before we decided to do the whole fake dating thing, Jaime took me to get some greasy fast food, because I was upset about Rhaegar. I was talking so much about him, and I felt guilty, so I asked Jaime if there was anyone in his life. He tried to play coy, but I knew immediately that he was talking about you. He was upset I’d guessed it so quickly.” Elia laughs a little, rolling her eyes. Brienne’s stomach twists at the thought. “I don’t know why he thought no one would guess. Once I started paying attention to the way he looked at you, it was obvious.”

“Obvious,” Brienne says, almost laughing. But her mind catches on moments that she dismissed before. Jaime sitting next to her on the bus, close, asking if he could listen to whatever she was listening to with her. Falling asleep on the way home with his head on her shoulder. Teasing her during their extra practices, trying to pull her down and always admiring her strength when he couldn’t. Touching her and smiling up at her and looking constantly charmed and amused by her, and she just thought, well, _that’s Jaime_. Was he trying to tell her all along? _Has _it been obvious? If it’s true, if he likes her, if all of those flirtations were genuine, then _yeah_, it’s really fucking obvious.

It makes other moments stand out, too. His repeated surprise when she called herself ugly. The hurt in his voice when she said that they should stop their extra practices. Was he _trying _to get her to look at his abs all those times he lifted his shirt and she thought he was just finicky about having a sweaty face?

When he saw her in that dress, after she felt almost pretty for her date with Hyle, and he froze and didn’t say anything. He wasn’t holding back taunts at all, was he? Of course he wasn’t. He isn’t the same kid he was in middle school. Why did she even _think _that?

And when she thought it was understanding and resignation on his face when she told him that she wasn’t in love with him. When she thought that it was awareness that she was lying and the death of her secret. That wasn’t it at all, was it? That was him taking _I’m not in love with you_ to heart.

She’s torn between wondering how she didn’t know and still worrying that somehow _everyone _has gotten it wrong but her.

“I don’t understand,” she admits.

“Could I make it clearer somehow?” Elia asks.

“I don’t know. I don’t think you would lie to me about this. I trust you. But…I just _don’t understand_. How could he like _me_?”

Elia frowns at her, and she reaches out, gripping one of Brienne’s hands in her own. Even her hands are small, the fingers thin and delicate. Soft, the nails perfect and never chipped. How could Brienne be anyone’s _choice_ when people like Elia Martell exist?

“You give yourself too little credit, Brienne,” Elia says. “You’re strong. You’re kind. You’re a good person. You’re generous with your time and with your chemistry help, even though I know it isn’t your subject. What did you think? Because you don’t have conventional beauty, it means no one would ever love you?”

Brienne can’t help but love the way Elia says that. _Conventional beauty_. No hesitation. No pause to try and figure out a _nice _way to say it. She knows exactly the words to say, and it makes Brienne think that she actually believes them. It makes her pause and think about Elia’s words, trying to figure out how she felt about it. _Really _felt, without deflecting or making excuses or pretending.

“I don’t know. I guess I thought _someone _might love me, one day. I just assumed it wouldn’t be someone like him.”

“Someone _like_ Jaime? Or someone who looks like him?”

Brienne considers it, because Elia is asking so seriously. She tries to remove Jaime from his face and his body. She tries to see past it. He struggles in school. He’s dyslexic and terrible with measurements. He’s one of the most natural soccer players she’s ever seen. He sometimes comes off as a bit of an asshole, but once he’s loyal to you, it’s a deep, abiding loyalty that lasts. He gets very emotional over silly things and does a terrible job hiding it. He’s funny, but he knows it, which makes him infuriating. He never stops talking. He gets nervous about things that he should know he doesn’t have to be nervous about.

If she stuck Jaime in Hyle’s body, would she still love him? She knows she would. There are plenty of attractive people that Brienne interacts with, and she’s never fallen in love with any of them just because they’re attractive. If Jaime was in Hyle’s body, he would be _Jaime_, and she would love him. And if Jaime was in Hyle’s body, then maybe she would believe him when he said that he liked her. They get along. They spend so much time together. He already said that she’s one of his best friends. She would believe that a boy who looked like Hyle could come to like her uneven features. She might even believe him when he said that he thought she was beautiful.

“Someone who looks like him,” she finally admits.

“Jaime’s…a different sort of person,” Elia says. “He likes you quite a bit. When I didn’t know you, I didn’t think much of you. I saw you. I knew that you had unconventional features. But that’s it. But now I know you, and I see your smile, and I have seen your eyes, and I think you _are _beautiful. You don’t have a beauty that everyone recognizes at first. You aren’t Cersei Lannister or Cat.”

“Or you,” Brienne points out. Elia smiles sadly.

“Thank you, Brienne. My point is that you become beautiful the more a person gets to know you, because you _are _beautiful, Brienne. Jaime believes that more deeply than anyone. I know it isn’t easy. I don’t think he expects it to be. But he wishes it was. He really didn’t tell me anything about your fight, you know. I didn’t lie about that. He was very upset. I think he hoped that he would be better able to explain himself.”

“I don’t know that he did such a bad job,” Brienne admits quietly. “I think the problem is that I wasn’t ready to hear it. Or I didn’t…know enough to realize what he was saying. He told me I was beautiful. He said he loved me. I told him he was lying.” _I told him I wasn’t in love with him, too. _

“He wasn’t,” Elia says fondly. “He hasn’t ever said that he _loves _you to me, but he didn’t need to. It’s obvious.”

“Is it?” Brienne asks. She hates to sound so desperate for validation, but it’s just so absurd. _Her_. Jaime Lannister being in love with _her_.

“It is,” Elia promises.

“I’m glad it’s the weekend. I have no _idea _what I’m going to say to him.”

“You have time to figure it out,” Elia says.

* * *

Except Brienne does not very intelligently use the weekend to figure anything out. She opens her text chain with Jaime several times but never thinks of anything to say to him. She goes with Ned and Howland to see a movie, and she doesn’t ask Cat afterwards how Jaime was, even though she knows that she and Jaime spent most of the day together hanging out with Cat's uncle. She wants to ask. She wants to ask if Cat told Jaime that Elia told them about the fake dating. She wants to ask if Jaime knows she knows, because she doesn’t want her silence to seem like anger now.

When school starts up again, she knows that she has to talk to him. He still continues to dodge her in the hallway, but he can’t avoid her in English class if _she_ follows _him_. She sits down next to him in his new seat, and she takes several seconds to compose herself so she doesn’t _totally _lose her shit, and then she turns to look at him. He’s already looking back at her. Wary and nervous and anticipatory, like he thinks she’s going to yell at him. He’s so scared of her. How is it possible that _he _is so scared of _her_?

“Extra practice?” she asks. Her voice shakes a little when she does. Jaime’s mouth opens just slightly, but he doesn’t reply. Just breathes out a full-bodied sigh of relief before he nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there will definitely be a larger conversation next chapter, but listen....I'm just a soft bitch and you all should not have expected High Drama here from me lmao.


	7. no one above the other, no one to break your heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wasn't sure I was going to get this chapter edited today because I am EXHAUSTED, but then I realized it's only 3.3k words, so I feel very thankful to past me for making this chapter to short.

Brienne acts completely normal during practice that afternoon, and Jaime can’t tell what it means. But she _wants to talk to him_, so he’s giddy and riled up and keeps smiling at her, which she returns.

“The look on her face when Elia told us that you weren’t really dating…” Cat had said that weekend. She let out a sound that was halfway between a romantic sigh and a disbelieving laugh. They had been on their way to her uncle’s apartment to help him pack to a move to a new place, which meant an entire day hanging out together with potential _hours_ of excruciating conversation about what happened between he and Brienne. Jaime had resigned himself to the fact that Cat was probably going to mention the fight at some point. He knew Brienne probably wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it, but Cat had a way of getting things out of people, and it’s not like Jaime wasn’t obvious about avoiding Brienne. But she didn’t even wait until they got to Brynden’s place. She said, “so you and Elia aren’t really dating, huh?” and the entire story came out from there.

The sleepover. Brienne’s apparently obvious feelings. Elia’s skillful and definitely purposeful decision to tell them everything.

“Was she glad?” he finally managed, and Cat reached over and put her hand on his arm, her eyes sparkling.

“She was glad,” she said gently. “You know you’re one of the only people I’d trust with her, right?”

“That’s because you’re a terrible judge of character,” Jaime replied. Cat as always seemed to sense when he was deflecting, and she squeezed his arm a little harder, giving it a shake.

“Stop it,” she insisted. “You’re a good person.”

“I’m an idiot and a coward. My fake girlfriend had to clean up my mistakes because _I_ was convinced that Brienne hated me.”

“You Lannisters,” Cat said ruefully. “At least Tyrion has the good sense to know your father’s teachings are absurd. It’s not _cowardice _to be afraid, Jaime. It’s perfectly natural to be afraid. And if you never worked up the courage to do something about your painfully obvious feelings for Brienne, that would still be all right. You would still be a good person.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“_I _do. We’re in high school, Jaime. Of course you were afraid. Don’t you think I was afraid when Ned and I started dating? The older we get, the more it feels like it _means _something, and that’s terrifying. You’d have to be an idiot _not_ to be afraid.”

Jaime wasn’t used to that. Acknowledgement and validation of his fear. Oddly, it made him feel more ready to be brave than any of Cersei’s taunts or Tyrion’s prodding. His siblings were trying to goad him into reacting with something spiteful, but Cat didn’t do that. Cat saw him exactly as he was, and she understood exactly what his weaknesses were, and she gently pushed him, gently reminded him that it was possible to still be a good person even when he was terrified.

* * *

He felt better about everything after his talk with Cat. The weekend seemed longer than usual, and he kept hoping that Brienne would reach out or ask to talk to him or _something, _but she didn’t. It was only Cat and Elia’s assurances that kept him from completely spiraling. _I’m not in love with you_, she had said. _I don’t have some hopeless crush on you_. And maybe that’s true. Maybe she’s not in love with him. But that doesn’t mean it has to be entirely lost. Cat and Elia both seemed sure that Brienne has _some _feelings for him, and they both seemed sure that she wasn’t just…ready to write him off entirely. And then she sat next to him in English class, and she offered. He still doesn’t know what it is she wants to say to him, exactly, but he knows it’s better than nothing.

When she left him on that field, he was so sure that that was _it. _He’d fucked up beyond repair. He had hurt her, and he had made her cry, and _yes_, she had hurt him too. Unwittingly, not understanding that she _was _hurting him, but she did. Not being in love with him, not having a crush on him, that was unavoidably a part of it, but mostly it was just the fact that she thought he _would _lie to her about something like that. Manipulate her by taking advantage of the crush he supposedly thought she had on him. If it was just that she didn’t have feelings for him, he would survive that. He isn’t Petyr Baelish. But to realize that she thought he was capable of something so horrible…

But maybe he misunderstood. Or maybe _she _misunderstood.

During practice, the fear is still there, and it amps up just from the anticipation of speaking to her afterwards. He knows that it could change everything. When he blundered into that horrible conversation the other day, he’d had no idea, but this one feels profoundly different. In some ways, it’s easier that they had such a gigantic, emotional argument, because he keeps feeling like it can’t _possibly _be bad. The way they left things before the weekend was about as bad as it could get. She wouldn’t ask to speak to him privately if it wasn’t going to be at least _some_ improvement.

Arthur offers to drive Elia home again, which Elia accepts gratefully. She gives Jaime a stern, encouraging look before she goes, and then she offers him a quiet high-five, which he returns with a smile. Brienne’s waiting across the field the same way she did the other day, and Jaime’s nerves all seem to come flooding back as he approaches.

Brienne kicks a ball lazily in his direction once he gets close.

“Passing,” she says, and he nods and taps the ball back to her. They take off running, passing the ball back and forth. It’s different from how it was the other day, with Brienne distracted and missing passes she usually wouldn’t. Jaime doesn’t goad her or joke with her or say anything at all. He keeps pace with her until she’s ready to cross, and then he intercepts and heads the ball into the goal. He looks to Brienne afterward for approval and finds her smiling broadly in his direction.

“Again,” she says.

They head back in the other direction, and again the passing is clean, and fast, and controlled, and Jaime’s glad to be alone with her but also wishes that someone _was _here to see this, because he’s pretty sure this is the best they’ve ever done. It is the most in-sync they’ve ever been. It makes him _hopeful_, and the hope is somehow enough to counter the worry that usually so quickly takes its place.

Jaime is used to bad things following on the heels of good. A new baby brother was followed immediately by the death of his mother. His first kiss with Cat came just hours before his father floated the idea of sending Jaime to boarding school. The letter telling him that he got into Stormlands was followed by Cersei telling him that she never even applied; she was going to school hundreds of miles away, driving the wedge between them even deeper. Maybe if it happens often enough, he’ll start to get cynical about it, but he doesn’t think he is, right now. He feels energized, ready for whatever happens next. He’s hopeful. It’s so _exactly _the opposite of what he felt the last time they were here together.

He kicks the ball into the goal off her cross again, and it’s another satisfying corner-of-the-net goal. Hard to stop. When he looks at Brienne again, she’s smiling even wider.

“Again?” he asks. But Brienne shakes her head. She’s making her way slowly from the corner, her hands playing with the hem of her shirt, nervous and uncomfortable but not avoiding his eyes. She stops still too far from him. Her voice is slightly raised. Only slightly.

“Elia told me the truth,” she says. Jaime nods. He wipes off his sweaty face with his shirt, buying himself a few precious seconds.

“I know,” he says. Silence. Brienne’s expression is unreadable. Jaime starts to walk closer. He hopes he’ll think of something to say once he reaches her. He doesn’t. He starts talking anyway. “She was crying at her locker. Rhaegar’s a cheating piece of shit, but no one wanted to say a single bad word about him. It was…infuriating. I’m glad I could help her. I don’t regret it. But I didn’t think…I didn’t realize that it would hurt you.”

“_Hurt _me,” Brienne says, defensive, and Jaime feels another little quiver of nervousness that he’s got it wrong, but he quells it within himself. No, he knows he isn’t wrong. He knows she’s just putting up the same walls she always does, wanting to protect herself. _The ugly girl will never make the first move_. He still doesn’t think she’s ugly, but he knows it’s more about how she feels than how she looks. He remembers Cat, squeezing his arm. Telling him that he wasn’t hopeless or a coward, no matter how afraid he was.

“I though you _tolerated _me,” he admits. “I thought I was. I don’t know. An annoyance. A _friend_, but I thought…when you pulled away, after Elia, I thought I had just overestimated. Like I was thinking we were _real_ friends and you just thought I was just your teammate. Chemistry partner. Slightly raised acquaintance, I guess.”

“I did,” Brienne says. Before hurt has too much time to settle in, she says, “I thought that was what you wanted.”

“It wasn’t. It wasn’t _all _I wanted.”

“What did you want?” Brienne asks. Jaime moves even closer, but Brienne holds out a hand to stop him from coming as close as he’d like, reminding him with her little glance backwards to make sure no one’s watching that he’s still dating Elia. Technically, in the eyes of the student body, he’s dating Elia Martell, and it will look horrible if he’s seen launching himself at Brienne Tarth right now, even though that’s exactly what he wants to do.

“You,” he says. He swallows back the urge to turn away, or look away, or fucking _run _away. He meets her eyes. They look especially pretty in the glaring lights from above the field. He watches as she gulps in a confused breath, and her eyes track over him, looking for a lie. She won’t find any. He knows she won’t. He wears every bit of the truth on his face.

“Me,” she finally says.

“You,” he says again. “Ever since last year, you’re all I’ve wanted.”

This is the part, he’s pretty sure, where one of them is supposed to break the distance between them. One of them is supposed to surge forward and grab the other and _kiss _them. Jaime can _see _Brienne imagining it. Wanting it. He smiles at her helplessly.

“You want to kiss me,” he guesses. Brienne’s grin slides slowly over her face.

“I do,” she admits. There is so much effort behind those two words. Admitting. She’s red and blotchy, the way she gets. She’s so afraid. She says it anyway. “I was lying, before. I do have a hopeless crush on you.”

“Not hopeless,” he says, pointed, and her smile grows and gets softer, all at once.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks.

“Why didn’t you tell _me_?”

“I asked you first.”

“I didn’t tell you because I was terrified to lose you. Or scare you off. Now you.”

“I guess…the same answer. Why didn’t you tell me about Elia?”

“I didn’t think I had to. I thought you wouldn’t care at all. And then when you _did _care, I thought it would be too obvious to tell you. I thought you would know I had a hopeless crush on you too.”

“Not hopeless,” Brienne repeats. 

Neither of them move, even though Jaime is sure that there’s no one else out here. He could kiss her, and no one would know. He’s sure of it.

“Again,” she says, and she gestures for him to start back down the field. The red of her blush is fading, and she smiles at him. He finds that his own smile refuses to go away.

“Again,” he says, and he taps the ball in her direction.

* * *

It’s not that he wouldn’t have rather kissed her. But he feels so _thrilled _just with what he got. He understands why Brienne didn’t want to, not while he’s still fake-dating Elia. He wouldn’t want to do that to Elia either. After all the doubt and the uncertainty of the past couple of days, it’s enough just to _know_ that he’s wanted in return. They have all four years at Stormlands to figure it out. There’s no rush.

He also knows that he looks like a fool, practically skipping his way out to his car in the parking lot. He’s only _barely _resisting the urge to hum.

He freezes when he sees Cersei sitting on the hood of his car. Her legs are crossed primly, her skirt tucked under her thighs. She’s wearing a bomber jacket that he’s pretty sure belongs to Taena. The secret girlfriend in question is sitting cross-legged on the roof, her elbows braced on her knees. Her own car is parked directly next to his. He sighs.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. Cersei just smiles at him, looking particularly pleased with herself.

“You never check your phone when you’re with Brienne. Did you notice that? It’s so sweet.”

Jaime pulls his phone from his bag and sees that he has roughly fifty texts, most of them from Tyrion.

“Did father finally croak?” he asks, only slightly worried.

“You’re lucky you’re so good looking. It’ll make up for being so fucking oblivious,” Taena says. Cersei silences her with a sharp glare and then beckons Jaime closer. Once he’s standing in front of her, she pulls out her own phone.

“I got you a present,” she says. Jaime sits beside her on the hood of the car, looking down at her phone with a wariness that he can’t help. But her smile towards him is all indulgent sister, and she pulls up a video. It was clearly filmed in the parking lot earlier that day. Lyanna Stark is holding a guitar by the neck, and she’s storming across the lot as Rhaegar chases her, pleading with her in a low voice.

“Holy shit,” Taena’s voice says on the phone from behind the camera. “Babe, this is amazing.”

“Just wait,” Cersei replies, singsongy and tinny in the video. The camera pans to everyone watching the scene. Ned is openly laughing. Cat is cheering. Bronn is holding up a lighter and waving it back and forth and pretending to wipe a tear.

“What did you do?” Jaime asks, but Cersei just smiles and shushes him.

Lyanna stalks up to Rhaegar’s car—a beautiful old thing that Aerys bought him—and swings the guitar straight into it. She does that, oh, ten or so times. Rhaegar tries to stop her, but Ned and Arthur both intervene, pulling him back. The entire time, Lyanna is yelling about him being a cheating bastard and screaming that he told her that he had already broken up with Elia when they started fooling around and she can’t _believe _she ever thought he was smart and funny.

“You’re a fucking _creep _and a _bastard _and I’m _glad _I didn’t fuck you, you piece of shit!” she screams, finally smashing her boot directly into the driver’s side mirror as the students start to chant “Stark, Stark, Stark”. Rhaegar yells something that can’t be heard over the resultant cheering, and Oberyn Martell makes an appearance to to gleefully help Ned push him back towards the school.

Then the crowd parts slightly, and Elia appears. Jaime immediately starts to laugh, because she’s dressed in this pale green summery dress that he _knows _is Cersei’s. She’s got a lacy white sweater over it. Her hair is ever-so-gently curled. She looks _angelic_.

“Cersei…” he starts.

“She needed to look the part!” Cersei exclaims defensively. “Shush!”

Elia approaches Lyanna, her expression all empathy.

“I’m sorry you didn’t know,” she says. She sounds sincere. As much as the rest of it is surely staged in some way, Jaime’s sure she _is _sincere. “I thought you did. I would have told you if I thought…”

“_I’m _sorry!” Lyanna exclaims with horror. “I can’t believe I actually believed him! I should have…!”

They talk over each other then, both desperate to convey how sorry they are, and Jaime just keeps shaking his head in Cersei’s direction while she and Taena both laugh at him.

On screen, the two girls hug, with Elia comforting Lyanna as the gathered students continue to cheer the damage to Rhaegar’s car, and Cersei pauses the video and leans back slightly on her elbows, arching an eyebrow in Jaime’s direction.

“So,” she says.

“I’m not going to ask you how you did it, but only because I think you’ll like bragging about it too much.”

“I’m going to tell you anyway. It was easy, actually. Once I realized that Lyanna believed Rhaegar’s side of the story out of genuine ignorance and not just because she _wanted _to believe it, I knew what I had to do. I just couldn’t figure out _when _to do it. Elia was telling me all about your little blow-up with Brienne, and how she was planning on telling Brienne the truth…”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we were letting Taena in on all our secrets,” Jaime says pointedly.

“If you think I didn’t already know that you’re in love with Brienne Tarth, you’re a fucking idiot,” Taena says. “I asked you if you were still single three months ago as a joke, and you looked at Brienne across the cafeteria and said _technically_. Like…was I not supposed to know?”

“Everyone knows,” Cersei says. “Well, everyone who matters.”

“Us and Taena and Elia and Tyrion?”

“And Cat Tully. And father.”

“_Father_?”

“He asked me with genuine confusion if you were still dating your ‘giant girlfriend’ last week because Aerys told him you were dating Elia.”

“Shit,” Jaime sighs.

“You’re not even reacting to the present I got you,” Cersei pouts, waving the phone in his face. “Elia is _safe_. I told Oberyn all about the kind of shit that people were saying about her. He’d heard some of it, of course, but not the worst parts. I told Lyanna everything. I showed her texts between Elia and I, and you and I, and _Rhaegar _and I in which he confirmed the cheating and begged me not to tell Lyanna. And now _everyone _knows. Jon Connington is probably having a breakdown somewhere, and if he tries anything, Varys has a few tricks up his sleeve that will take him _right _out.” She grins at him. “Check your phone, Jaime.”

He does, scrolling through the messages until he sees that Elia has started a group chat between him, her, and Cat.

_We broke up after school by the flagpole, my love. Don’t worry! Good breakup! Hugs all around! I discovered I needed time to “find myself” or whatever it is Westerosi girls are always saying. Cat was of course there to “witness”._

_I was honored to see such a tender and respectful breakup, and I have of course told everyone I know all about it_, Cat replies, followed by several rows of cat emojis with heart-eyes.

“Oh,” Jaime says. It hits him harder, remembering the way he and Brienne had stood out on the soccer field, knowing they couldn’t get any closer but also knowing that they would like to. “_Oh_! I have to go. Shit. I have to go talk to Brienne. Oh gods. Thank you.”

He drops a kiss to his sister’s head as she tilts it in his direction, waiting for it. Then he ruffles her hair and ignores her annoyed gasp.

“Get off my car!” he says. “I need to go!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I THINK that next chapter will be the last, unless I decide to do the epilogue I've occasionally joked about on tumblr. I have a rough idea for it, but I'm not 100% sure, so...we'll see.


	8. I want you to love me now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so there will definitely be an epilogue. The end parts of this chapter were originally going to be one, but I decided a time-jump scene needed to happen, so stay tuned for that! 
> 
> I'm not promising anything, but it's really short and already written, so it might get posted later today. 
> 
> Anyway this chapter ended up being way more about Brienne fighting her insecurities and winning than I thought it would!

Brienne never really thought she would be _here_.

Well, alone in her bedroom. She’s _here _a lot. But here in the sense that she feels actual hope for something that had otherwise been literally unthinkable.

She had sort of blown it off during the sleepover when Elia asked her. When she looked so earnestly incredulous and asked if Brienne really thought she would be unloved forever just because of her looks. Brienne had said that she always assumed it just wouldn’t be someone as good-looking as Jaime, and that’s true. But in her deepest fears, in the very back of her mind, she really had assumed it would just be…no one. Who would _ever _want her?

When she was talking to Jaime out on the field, and when she saw the way he looked at her…maybe it _had _to be Elia. It absolutely defies logic that Jaime thought she would turn him down, but she knows she isn’t the only one with insecurities, and she knows that insecurities aren’t always about the way a person looks. She thinks of the way Jaime used to hide his chemistry tests from her after he got them back, before he started going to a tutor. She knows that Jaime has plenty of things that he’s insecure about. She isn’t the only one. Maybe Brienne needed Elia to point it out, and maybe Jaime needed it too.

After practice, alone in her room, she stands in her mirror and she looks at her reflection. She still doesn’t see it. She’s not sure she ever will. But when it’s Jaime’s eyes looking back at her and not her own, maybe she’ll at least be able to _believe it_. She’d like to.

Her phone buzzes on her bedside table, and she picks it up. A text from Jaime. She bites her lip to contain a smile, and she sits down on her bed. She has to psych herself up to open it, just like she always has.

_Can I come over? I need to talk to you_, he says. It’s a little later than she would like, and she knows her father is probably already asleep in front of the television in the basement, and he won’t like it if he hears the front door open, but she’s not going to say _no_. Not after everything that happened today.

_Sure_, she writes, and she puts her phone back down and lies on her back and tries to just…_chill_. It’s weird. She’s not worried at all. She’s not insecure or convinced that he’s coming to her house to tell her that everything was a huge mistake. Her eyes were opened, and they’re staying open. She can’t unsee the way he looked at her, and she won’t let her insecurities blind her again. She…

She stifles a scream as something hits her window. Her mouth drops open in outrage when she looks and sees Jaime’s hand waving at her. He’s pulling himself up with the other arm, muscles straining, hanging onto the ledge outside her second-floor bedroom.

“What are you _doing_?” she demands.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he asks, his voice muffled and incredulous through the glass. Brienne suddenly realizes what this would look like if her father caught her, or if her neighbors saw her. She knows she’s blushing as she hurries over and wrenches open the window. Mortifying her even further, she has to wrestle with the screen to get it to pop out before she can reach down and pull Jaime in through the window. He tries to be as quiet as possible, but he’s _Jaime_, and he trips and nearly falls almost immediately. She catches him and shoves him over towards her bed, holding her finger to her lips as she closes the window again and then pulls all her curtains shut for good measure.

When she turns to face him, Jaime’s leaning against the end of her bed looking very smug and pleased with himself as he looks around, and _gods_, her room is suddenly so embarrassing and messy and…

“What are you _doing _here?” she hisses.

“You told me I could!”

“I assumed you meant you would come to the front door like a human person.”

“What would ever make you think I’d do something the boring way?” Jaime points out, and Brienne sighs and shakes her head, because, well. He’s not wrong. Jaime laughs at her expression and steps closer. He still has to look up into her eyes. He’s still too pretty. But he looked at her on the field, and he told her how he felt, and she trusts him. She couldn’t, before, when she didn’t _know_. Maybe that means she still has a bit of a ways to go. She wants to be able to say she trusts him truly without having to be told by someone else. But she trusts him more with every moment that passes. She doesn’t back away even though there is that horrible impulse to _hide_. She thinks her face grows redder the longer they stare at each other, but there is something about being here inside her bedroom that makes her feel at once vulnerable and brave. Safe and ready to face whatever happens.

“What are you doing here, Jaime?” she asks. She knows he can hear how fond she is, because he smiles helplessly, and it’s an expression so open that she can almost _feel _it hit her gut.

“Elia broke up with me today,” he says. “Turns out we missed quite a shitshow while we were practicing. Elia’s reputation is officially restored, thanks to my sister and her conniving probably-girlfriend.”

“Taena?”

“Yeah, her. Lyanna broke up with Rhaegar. Broke his guitar, too, so it’s safe to eat lunch outside on the grass again. Now she and Elia are friends, Oberyn and Ned are gonna team up and be angsty and brotherly about it, and the whole school is going to pretend that they were never on Rhaegar’s side. If there’s one thing that could get them to turn on him, it’s an extremely violent display and a broken car mirror.”

“Huh. Good for Lyanna,” Brienne muses. Jaime sighs, affecting a wounded expression.

“Good for Lyanna?” he asks. “Can you think of anyone else this might be good news for?”

He can’t even _pretend _for long without smiling, and it makes her own smile bigger. It feels almost too big, stretched out. She almost can’t believe it, except he’s _here_. 

“We should probably wait a little, still,” she points out. “We don’t want people to think…”

“Does that mean you don’t want me to kiss you?” he asks. He’s looking up at her like he always did. Like he did when she knocked him down in practice and like he did when she helped him up. His eyes soft and focused on her. On _her_. Not everyone. Just her. She can’t believe she wasted so much time not realizing that.

“I didn’t say that,” she says, still smiling, and he steps just a bit closer. His hand finds her shirt, and he wraps his fingers around it the way he did that day at her locker. Pulling her closer. When she leans down to meet him, he pushes himself up on his toes so that they’re of equal height, and his lips meet hers.

Brienne has never been kissed before. She doesn’t know where exactly this one falls. She’s sure she’s doing something wrong. She’s sure there’s some _etiquette _or something that she’s breaking, because she has never kissed anyone before, and because it’s _her_, and she has never met a situation that she couldn’t somehow make worse with her awkwardness and her too-large body. But Jaime doesn’t seem to notice. If she’s doing anything wrong, Jaime doesn’t mind. He keeps kissing her. She feels his fingers at the back of her neck, feels them in her hair. He wants her closer.

She obliges, and he laughs as she crowds him closer to the bed. He kisses her once more. A lingering one.

“I knew I’d like kissing someone taller than me,” he says.

“Oh is _that _all that was?” Brienne replies. He can tell she’s joking; he doesn’t rush to reassure her. He only laughs, and he kisses her again.

“I also knew I’d like kissing someone with your lips. And your hair. And your freckles.”

“My _freckles_,” Brienne laughs. “You’re an idiot.”

“I am. Absolutely. For you, especially. You wouldn’t believe the grief I’ve put my poor siblings through. I think Cersei helped me with Elia mostly just to get me to shut up about it.”

“Do that many people really know?”

“_Taena _knew. Apparently I wasn’t very subtle. My father thought we were dating already.”

“I can’t wait to hear what Tywin Lannister thought of _me_ dating his son,” Brienne says. She tries to make it sound funny, but Jaime plainly hears the tiny nervous jitter in her voice. Because, well. It’s not as if Tywin’s disapproval would _stop _her, but it would feel a bit shitty.

“He called you my giant girlfriend,” Jaime says, already laughing. He flops back onto her bed as if that’s just…a normal thing that people do. “He hates that you’re taller than me. I already liked that, but my father’s disapproval makes it even sexier somehow.” He sees her watching him, and he looks suddenly just a bit nervous. She thinks of what she said to him on the field. That she sometimes forgets that she can hurt him. She doesn’t let herself forget now. “You don’t care about what he says, right? Fuck him. _I _don’t care.”

“I don’t care,” Brienne says. She sits gingerly beside him, her back against the pillows. He lounges out on the other side, propped up on one elbow. It should feel more monumental, she thinks. A boy in her bed. But it feels like it would with Cat, or Elia. The added element of wanting him is there, and the added element of possibility. But he’s still Jaime. He’s still her friend. Is it weird that she’s relieved about that? Is it weird that she thought everything would feel different and now is glad that it’s only _some _things?

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“I’m sure,” she says. She smiles at him and shifts down on the bed so she’s beside him, propped up on her other elbow, looking at him. He’s beautiful in this light. She still doesn’t understand how he’s looking at her the way he is, with his eyes wide with wonderment, but it makes her want to cry.

“I could always ask Tyrion to kill him for you. He might do it.”

That makes her laugh, and she stifles it, ducks her head, and Jaime swoops in and kisses her again. Nothing like the last one, where it felt frantic and heady and almost too much. This is just soft. Quick. Promising.

* * *

Jaime doesn’t stay for very long that night. He takes her through his version of events since they started getting closer last year, and there’s something hilarious about the way he’s so indignant every time she admits to jealousy or wanting or feelings of inadequacy. He nearly shouts “I knew it!” when she mentions that he has tortured her by raising up his shirt to wipe his face, and she clamps her hand over his mouth and shushes him, trying to hide her own laughter. Her father never moves from the basement, and she knows from experience that he probably won’t, but still. She likes the quiet of this moment. Whispering secrets to each other. Things she thought she would have to bottle up inside herself until she died, but she doesn’t. She can tell him anything, and he still wants her.

* * *

After he leaves, she texts Elia and Cat and tells them everything, and she texts with them long into the night. It feels incredibly _worth it_, even though she’s exhausted the next day in school. Jaime smiles at her throughout the day in this sly, performative little way, but otherwise he acts exactly like himself, and it’s such a relief.

They keep doing their extra practices, and afterwards they drive to her house, and he climbs in her window, and they talk, and they kiss, and they fool around.

Two weeks later, Brienne tells Jaime that she’s ready. The next morning, he kisses her in the hallway in front of half of the student body.

Brienne knows there will be people talking about it. They talked about Elia. They talked about Brienne after the bet. There are going to be people who say cruel and terrible things, and she knows that she’s going to have to try hard not to listen to them. But Jaime looks up at her in the hallway, and she can see that he’s nervous, too. He’s nervous that she’s going to run. He’s nervous that she’s going to think that it’s more important to keep herself hidden than it is to be with him. She knows how he thinks, now.

She kisses him again, just for good measure. She hates the attention, and she hates the fact that everyone is watching them, but she won’t have Jaime think that she’s too embarrassed. She won’t hurt him like that again.

An hour later, she hears Cersei telling a group of people that she thinks Jaime and Brienne are lucky because they’re going to college together next year. An hour after that, Catelyn tells Jaime that he and Brienne _need _to sit with she and Ned at lunch. She calls it a “double date”. And Elia, sweet Elia, squeals happily and flings her arms around Brienne’s neck in the middle of the hallway, banishing any lingering fears from the student body that their darling Elia Martell was hurt by this apparently incomprehensible pairing.

The next day, Brienne prepares for more of the same, but then Cersei walks up to Taena in the hallway with a gigantic bouquet of flowers, and she asks Taena to prom. When Taena accepts, grinning already, Cersei kisses her.

Jaime and Brienne were the top news story for less than a full day. When Brienne asks Jaime if Cersei did it to help them fade into the background or if it was because she was jealous of the attention, he laughs and kisses her on the cheek.

“Now you’re starting to figure her out,” he says.

“But I didn’t figure anything out! I said two things that I can’t decide between.”

“Exactly,” Jaime replies.

* * *

It’s not that it’s ever _gone_. The ladder. Brienne gets better as time goes by, and she learns not to listen to it as much as she did in high school. But she can see it in peoples’ eyes when they see her with Jaime for the first time.

* * *

She sees it in her college roommate. Tywin and Selwyn both put their foot down about off-campus housing freshman year, convinced that either a pregnancy or a horrible breakup is going to happen, and they insist that freshman year be spent in dorms. Jaime’s all maudlin and annoying about it even though they’re in the same building, a single floor apart. That first day, Brienne’s unpacking her things, ignoring her phone on her bed as it vibrates nonstop with texts.

“Your phone is blowing up,” Selyse notes. Brienne can already tell that this is going to be a trying year. Sure, Selyse isn’t the red-headed barefoot girl across the hall who’s definitely going to set off the fire alarm at three in the morning judging from all the candles Brienne saw her going into her room with. But Brienne might _prefer _Melisandre. Selyse took one look at Brienne and said, “_you can’t possibly be in the right place_”, with this raw distaste that still stings.

“It’s just my boyfriend,” Brienne says absently, folding her clothes so carefully that it takes her a moment to realize that Selyse is staring at her. Her mouth moving but not producing words, like her brain is taking its time to cycle through the least awful thing to say.

“Is he _dying_?” she finally settles on. Brienne’s a bit surprised. She expected something crueler to win out. She still sounds _disgusted_, but she didn’t say it out loud. “I mean, he’s just texting you a lot.”

“He’s like one floor down. He’s just dramatic,” Brienne answers. Selyse smiles doubtfully, and Brienne picks up her phone.

_Feel like being petty? _she asks, instead of responding to any of his enthusiastic reviews of his own roommate, Addam.

_Almost always_, Jaime responds. _Where do you need me? _

He comes barging in a few moments later, barely even looking at Selyse before launching himself up to kiss Brienne.

Which. Not that it isn’t nice. And not that she didn’t _specifically _ask for petty. But it is a bit _much. _

“This is what happens when you don’t answer my texts,” he says breathlessly when he pulls away, grinning and giving her a bit of a wink. She loves him. Her Jaime. “I thought you’d run off or died or smashed your phone.”

“I’ll remember that for next time,” she says.

* * *

She sees it in her soccer teammates. Their faces when they see her for the first time and the shift in their expressions when she shows up to a team meeting a few weeks in and Jaime’s holding her hand.

They’ve actually been _avoiding _this on purpose, because she didn’t want things to get weird with the team, and she and Jaime have been dating long enough now that they’re not as embarrassing as they were at first. They can keep it together for a few hours at practice before sneaking off to his room or hers (or Melisandre’s, actually, because her roommate left after a week, and no one took her place, and one day Melisandre passed Brienne in the hall and slipped an extra key into her hand with a wink and a whispered “I’m out late most nights if you need a room”. Which was the weirdest thing anyone had ever said to Brienne, certainly, but she wasn’t going to turn it down).

(Also, Melisandre keeps a bowl of condoms right beside the extra bed, and she always thanks Brienne sweetly because Brienne washes the sheets and always leaves snacks from her father’s care packages as a thank you, and it’s _weird_, but it’s not terrible. Jaime already searched the room for a hidden camera, but they’ve settled on “she’s just a big supporter of boning and wants to help us do it” as an explanation.)

But this sudden handholding isn’t about some uncharacteristic excess of affection on Jaime’s part, and Brienne’s annoyed because she already _told _him not to make a big deal about it. This is about _Tormund_.

Brienne doesn’t think her first instinct has ever been _this person likes me_, because, well, they usually don’t. But there’s no questioning it with Tormund. Tormund has never, not for a single second, been anything but obvious. He stares at her. He smiles at her. He calls her _a big woman_ with a frank appreciation that makes Brienne flush. It’s not like he’s aggressive about it, or even really overtly creepy. Actually, she appreciates the bluntness of his interest. She’d never recognize anything else.

But she’s just not _interested _in Tormund. He seems nice enough, and he makes her laugh sometimes, but he’s too coarse and loud and vulgar for her. He’s just not her type, and he likes her primarily because she’s _his_. If she’d met him in high school, before Jaime, she thinks she probably would have given it a go, because a person who liked her because of her looks and not in spite of them would have been impossible to resist. She just feels differently, now that everything has happened with Jaime. She knows that being liked for who she is at her core is a different feeling than the kind of frank physical appreciation that she craved once. Jaime knowing her and liking her and wanting to spend time with her. Falling in love with her and then finding her beautiful after. She wants _that_. She wants Jaime.

She has told Jaime this no less than fifteen times, but he’s _Jaime_. From the moment Tormund started flirting with her, he has regarded the whole thing with a mingling of amusement, horror, and insecurity. She’d thought it was funny until she realized he was genuinely _nervous _for some reason that she would abandon him for Tormund, and she’d spent like twenty minutes reminding him of all the things she liked about him, which was enough to have him preening and annoying for the rest of the week.

In hindsight, maybe it isn’t such a surprise that he feels the need to _mark his territory _by grabbing her hand the way he does, but she hates the looks of confusion on the faces of their teammates.

“Are you two a thing?” asks Mance bluntly, grinning. Of everyone on the team, he’s the only person Brienne can say for sure isn’t being a dick about it.

“We are,” Jaime says, firmly. He so pointedly does _not _look at Tormund.

Some of the guys make the exact expressions she was expecting. Tormund looks mildly devastated. Mance smiles.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. That ladder is still there, but it doesn’t matter to her as much as it used to. The very idea of that is _thrilling_. She feels like she’s just a bit free of it, for the first time.

* * *

She sees it, hilariously, at the hospital.

It happens _five times _in the course of a single day.

Catelyn, to the shock of literally everyone who has ever met her, announces she’s pregnant only two years into college. She’s fierce and uncompromising in the face of everyone’s confusion and concern.

“Yes, it was an accident, and _yes_, I’m doing this anyway,” she says. Her father and brother both shrug and accept it. Lysa is a bit more reluctant to accept it, arguing that Cat will ruin her life. Brienne falls somewhere in the middle, and so does Elia. Jaime, though, is ecstatic. He’s convinced he’s going to be the godfather. He’s also convinced Cat is going to name the kid Jaime.

On the day Cat goes into labor, Ned calls Brienne in a panic because he’s stuck at the airport on his way home, and he asks them to drive down and be with her. He needn’t have worried: Jaime already has overnight bags packed for both of them in the front hall closet of their apartment. They drive for four hours and show up finally at the hospital, where Jaime’s Lannister connections prove useful, considering the Joanna Lannister Maternity Ward his father had generously donated a fuckton of money to after his wife’s death. They’re rushed through, and for the rest of the long hours they spend there, nurses are _constantly _bustling in and assuming that Jaime is the father.

It isn’t the assumption that makes Brienne think of her ladder again and the fact that, in the eyes of the rest of the world, she and Jaime don’t make _sense_. They see a nervous twenty year old holding Cat’s hand and shouting at her about breathing right, and it makes sense that they would assume he’s the dad. But there’s always a moment of confusion and occasional disgust every time Jaime or Cat correct them.

“You’re the father?” one asks.

“Gods no. I’m with her,” Jaime says, gesturing to Brienne on the other side of the bed. And there’s this look. This raised eyebrow. A slight pursing of the lips. The third time it happens, Brienne laughs loudly. The fourth time, Catelyn starts giggling and buries her face in her hands.

It’s not like Brienne _minds_. She’s so focused on trying not to freak out about the fact that she and Jaime are the only support that their twenty-year-old best friend has while she’s going through this. It’s just something she notices. Something she files away for later. Cataloguing all the incidents where she’s proven right but cares less and less about it each time.

Hoster and Edmure Tully finally show up, both out of breath and sweating, and eventually Cat’s uncle arrives as well, dragging a nervous Lysa along with him. Ned’s well in the air when the labor starts in earnest, and he ends up missing the birth entirely, but none of them leave until he arrives so they can all be there when he first meets his son.

Jaime—who has spent the intervening hours between the birth and Ned’s arrival gently harassing an exhausted, loopy Catelyn, trying to persuade her to name the boy after him, and then trying to be named as the kid’s godfather even though she already promised it to Edmure, mostly to make her laugh but also because it’s _Jaime_—is a bit disappointed to hear that the boy’s name is Robb.

* * *

She sees it in her coworkers.

After she graduates college, she tries out for and makes a women’s soccer team. She spends a few years doing that while also working this terribly boring data entry job that allows her to work from the road. Most of the girls on the team don’t even _blink _when Jaime shows up the first time. They’ve gotten to know her and they like her well enough to understand exactly how a guy who looks like Jaime could fall for someone like her.

Jaime doesn’t bother with soccer after college except to play in an adult league in the city; he had no ambitions for a professional career. He_ does _go to all of her games, though she has to chide him more than once about being just slightly too obnoxious in his support of her. During their time at Stormlands, he eventually settled on wanting to teach, so he enrolls in a Masters course online and starts teaching wherever will have him. They exist for a few years in this halfway place. Settled and glad to be together, but not quite _settled down_, because they’re both constantly moving and rarely living in one place for very long.

Cat and Ned have another child right out of school—a girl, Sansa—and Jaime and Brienne _do _get to be godparents to this one. Jaime’s over the moon about it, constantly going on about spoiling her rotten, and it makes Brienne start to want. Not necessarily children yet. She doesn’t quite feel ready. But she wants to be _home_. She wants to live near enough to Cat and Ned and the children that she and Jaime can be a regular part of their lives. She wants to find a job and buy a house and maybe get a pet and start planning for a family. It’s not something she ever really thought of wanting before, but now she finds that she wants it with Jaime.

She makes the national team one year, and they win the Womens World Cup with her assistance. Her family is there. Her friends are there. Elia and Arthur and Cat and Ned and both children. Her father. Jaime, always Jaime, dragging along Cersei and Tyrion. Even _Tywin _is there for the final game, wearing her team jersey and staidly waving a little flag in the air, offering a polite golf clap every time she does something notable.

She was afraid that it wouldn’t be enough. That she would still want _more_ from this. But afterwards, and in the months that follow, she feels _content_. She did something she set out to do. She’s ready for something else. She decides on one last season with her team, and then she announces her retirement.

Jaime asks her if she’ll marry him three days after the announcement. When she says yes, they both cry. Tyrion unfortunately is forced to witness this, and he brings it up at least twice a month for the rest of their lives.

She gets a job at an accounting firm. Not terribly exciting, but it allows her to coach soccer on the side, which she adores doing. She and Jaime are lucky enough to find a house that’s only twenty minutes away from Cat and Ned, and Jaime gets a settled teaching job at their old high school, which he’s thrilled by, because most of the teachers are still around and they all regard him with suspicion, remembering what he was like as a student.

She puts a picture of she and Jaime in her cubicle. One of those cutesy, silly ones they took when they announced their engagement on social media. Her new co-workers are a gossipy bunch, which isn’t exactly what Brienne expected from a bunch of accountants, but she knows something’s going on when people keep stopping by her desk to chat in the first week.

Eventually, someone asks, “is that your boyfriend?”

“Fiancé,” Brienne replies. She sighs, knowing exactly where this is going. “Yes, he’s very attractive. Yes, I know I’m not. Yes, I’ll bring him to the company holiday party so you can see for yourself that I haven’t just edited a photo of some ridiculously good-looking stock model. Is there anything else?”

It doesn’t exactly do wonders for her reputation around the office, but it gets them to leave her alone, at least. She knows they still don’t believe her, but at least they’re not _talking _to her about it.

Hyle Hunt wanders down one day from the floor above her, where he has apparently spent the past few weeks terrified that she would come find him and inform all his coworkers about the whole bet thing. Brienne doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he could have literally spoken to her and she wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t said, “it’s me, Hyle” when he walked up.

Hyle is bizarrely popular among the accountants, apparently. They keep saying hi to him as they walk past, looking curiously at the two of them chatting. When she mentions it to Jaime later that night, he laughs heartily at the thought and says “of _course _he is” with genuine delight.

She and Hyle become—well, not friends. Friend_ly_, at least. They occasionally talk at work. He introduces her to a few people that she sometimes gets lunch with.

And then one time she’s in the break room grabbing the lunch she brought from home, and she hears him talking in the next room, the conference room.

“They’ve been dating since high school,” he says, sounding genuinely confused. “What, did you think she just made him up?”

“Well…you’ve seen the picture of him,” hedges one woman, sounding a little sly and…is she _flirting _with Hyle? What is going _on _in this place?

“I’ve seen him in real life,” Hyle replies. He still sounds baffled. She knows he can’t possibly be. He has to know why this woman is asking. It makes her feel wary. She wants so badly to believe that he’s just being a good person, but he’s burned her before.

“Does he really look like that?”

“I mean, I haven’t seen him since we graduated, but he was always _the _hottest kid in school. And you should have seen his twin sister. I mean…it was frankly unfair. Brienne and I almost dated once, but she ended up with Jaime instead. No surprise there. You know the type. Kind of a dick in middle school, but once he evened out in high school, he got _nice _in addition to being hot. No one had a chance. He’s a teacher now. Like he needed to be more perfect.”

The other woman doesn’t say anything for a bit, and then she changes the subject.

The next time Hyle sees her, he doesn’t mention it, and Brienne can’t stop smiling.

* * *

It happens, and it keeps happening, and she knows it _will _keep happening, because Petyr Baelish may (still) be a fucking joke, but he at least kind of knew what he was talking about. It’s not that the ladder is important to everyone, but she knows it’s important enough to some people that her relationship with Jaime will always give them pause. But she’s not in high school anymore. She left that mentality behind the moment Jaime told her that he wanted her. The moment he kissed her, standing in her bedroom.

Some people might never grow out of it, but Brienne has. She’s happy to leave it behind her completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen, I know Westeros doesn't have godparents, but the POWER of Jaime and Brienne being Sansa's was TOO STRONG


	9. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you thought I wouldn't find a way to add some Jaime + Sansa friendship in this...

Jaime feels like a kid again every time he comes out to the soccer field. He doesn’t do it often, because frankly there’s rarely a reason for it, but it’s Brienne’s first official day as the new coach, and he has to watch at least a _little. _He leans against the side of the bleachers, watching the practice, hopefully hidden enough that she won’t see him and get embarrassed. It just _feels _like being back in school for real. The smell, maybe. Or just the sight of Brienne out there towering over a bunch of highscoolers. Sure, he wasn’t wearing khakis and a fucking cardigan when he was in high school, but maybe he would have been if he knew how comfortable they are.

He checks his phone again and glances back at the school’s side door. Still no sign of his charge for the afternoon. He fires off a quick text to Catelyn, letting her know they’ll be late. He turns back to watch practice, grin widening as he watches his wife gently correcting Shireen Baratheon’s form. Brienne’s assistant coach, Pod, blows the whistle again, and the girls take off running.

When they were in high school, they didn’t even have enough interested girls to field a single girl’s team. Now there are two of them. He loves the look of pride on Brienne’s face every time she remembers how it used to be.

Finally, he hears someone running up to him, and Sansa appears, breathless and smiling.

“Sorry,” she says. “I was talking to…someone.” She blushes a little, and Jaime hides a smile.

“It’s fine. No rush. I was just watching practice.”

“Everyone _loves _Auntie Brienne already,” Sansa informs him. She’s fourteen now, and she speaks with a prim kind of imitation of adulthood that always makes Jaime want to laugh. To be fair, she’s been doing that since she was like _five_. “They’re all happy she’s the new coach.”

“Well, they should be. She’s the best.”

“Mhm,” Sansa agrees. “Can we watch for a bit?”

There’s something a little leading in the question, so Jaime nods and sits down with her on the bleachers. Sansa probably thinks she’s subtle. He certainly did when _he _was fourteen. But she’s so clearly looking for something. He understands a lot more about teenagers now than he did, teaching high school and being around Cat’s kids. His own children are only ten and six, not quite there yet, but he’s had _some _practice. Not enough to tell what Sansa is thinking, unfortunately. But some.

“So what’s up?” he asks tentatively. Sansa sighs, and he thinks she’s going to avoid answering. He definitely wouldn’t have told his parents’ friends anything when he was her age. But instead she does the exact opposite.

She opens her mouth, and a _torrent _of information pours out.

He feels a bit like he’s being tossed around in a very tiny boat in a very large storm, but he clings to his sanity enough to understand that she’s talking about Margaery Tyrell, a girl who’s a year above her. Ms. Tyrell’s granddaughter, which means Margaery terrifies him just a bit. But she doesn’t seem to terrify _Sansa_. No, Sansa’s like a thesaurus page for the words _beautiful _and _kind_ as she prattles on about Margaery’s _stupid _hair and _stupid _smile and the way she _stupidly _kissed Sansa on the cheek just now at her locker and Sansa can’t tell what it means.

When she’s done, she looks over at Jaime beseechingly, and her face falls when she sees the expression he’s wearing.

“You don’t think she likes me?” she asks. Jaime’s not sure how _that’s _the interpretation she landed on. As far as he can tell, his face is just shellshocked.

“_I_ don’t know, Sansa,” he says incredulously. “I don’t know how to tell that kind of thing.”

“What? Uncle Jaime, you’re _married_. You have _children_. You’re supposed to know that stuff!”

“If I have ever given you the impression that I know anything, I’m very sorry,” he says with a straight face, and Sansa punches him in the arm.

“You’re such an idiot,” she says.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Uncle _Jaime_.”

“Look,” Jaime sighs, gesturing to the field, where Brienne has been sending them occasional concerned glances and now looks vaguely alarmed to see him pointing her way. “Do you have any idea how long it took me and Brienne to get together?”

“Mum said you were in high school.”

“We were, but I had a massive crush on her for like a _year _before I did anything about it, and even then it was all your mom and Aunt Elia.”

“Mum never told me that! She helped?”

“She did. She knew Brienne well enough to tell me that Brienne liked me back, and I trusted her. She was the only person I’d ever dated before Brienne, so she knew exactly what to say.”

Sansa stares at him. Jaime stares back.

“You _dated_…!”

“Did you not _know _that…?”

“…my _mother_? Uncle Jaime! _What_?”

“I’m not your blood uncle!” Jaime reminds her loudly, glancing around to make sure no one’s listening to this. “We’re _friends_! It was just, like, kid stuff. I didn’t realize it was a secret!”

“No wonder dad hates you,” Sansa muses.

“Your father doesn’t hate me. He just doesn’t think I’m funny.”

Sansa shakes her head and looks out at the field. Long enough for Jaime to send a quick text to Cat. An apology and explanation with a bunch of cringing emojis and a couple of red alert alarms for good measure.

_You MOTHERFUCKER_, Cat texts back, immediately. _I am babysitting your CHILDREN and this is the thanks I get?_

Kissy-face emojis seem appropriate here, so Jaime sends her like eleven before stowing his phone back into his pocket, sighing.

Well, there doesn’t seem to be a way to make this conversation worse, so Jaime decides to just…tell Sansa everything.

“All right. So I was a senior in high school,” he says. Sansa turns to him, eyes lighting up. He knows she loves a good romcom just as much as he does, so he decides to make this as annoyingly theatrical as he can. “And I found Elia Martell, the sweetest girl in school except maybe Brienne, crying at her locker.”

“Oh no!” Sansa breathes. “Auntie Elia! Why was she crying?”

“Because her scumbag boyfriend cheated on her with, uh. Well.” Jaime abruptly remembers the existence of Jon Stark, Lyanna’s son from that one regrettable post-relationship hookup with Rhaegar when she was in college. “Maybe I’ll keep _some _secrets for your parents to explain. The point is that he cheated on her, because he was an idiot.”

“Not Uncle Arthur!”

“_No_, seven hells. Arthur would never. No, this guy wasn’t important. But Elia was upset, so I…”

* * *

By the time he finishes up the whole story, Sansa is literally on the edge of her seat, and Brienne’s practice is over. He meant to head over to the Stark house earlier than this, but this is probably better. In all honesty, he’s a bit afraid to face Cat now without Brienne to protect him. If he’s nice enough, maybe he can convince _her _to drop off Sansa and pick up Joanna and Arianne.

“What are you two still doing here?” Brienne asks. Sansa jumps up and hugs her, squeezing her around the waist.

“Waiting for you,” she says sweetly. Brienne smiles and kisses her on the top of the head, and Sansa basks in the envy of the soccer team members. She did the same thing earlier today in Jaime’s history class, “accidentally” calling him _Uncle Jaime_ because she knows he’s one of the most popular teachers in their school and that it’ll make the other kids jealous.

“That was nice of you,” Brienne says, bemused, and Sansa grins and then detaches herself and runs off after her friend Jeyne, who’s waiting for her at the edge of the field, waving. Jaime puts his head in his hands and laughs as Brienne takes a seat next to him, stretching those long legs of hers out on the bleachers.

“What’s so funny?” she asks, grinning at him.

They’ve been married for years, but still he feels so comforted when she sits close to him like this. Near and real and _his_. He leans over to drop a quick peck on her lips, and he ignores her sigh and the gasps from some of the students who are still packing up.

“They’ll know eventually,” he says. “Especially if they have me for history. I never shut up about you.”

“You’re so annoying,” she says, pushing him away. But she’s grinning at him, and she doesn’t stop him when he leans his arm up against hers, taking comfort in her nearness. “What were you and Sansa talking about? It seemed very intense.”

“Well, you know Sansa.”

“I also know _you_. The two of you are a dangerous combination.”

Jaime grins the way he knows he always does when someone reminds him how alike he and his goddaughter are.

“I know. It’s fascinating. She was telling me about a crush she has, and she wanted advice. I decided to tell her all about the fake dating thing so she would know how terrible an idea that was.”

Brienne perks up. She checks behind her to make sure Sansa’s still chatting.

“Who is it?” she asks. “Who does she like?”

“Ooh, sorry, Tarth. I can’t help you. Student-teacher confidentiality. Very important rules.”

“Shut _up_. You know she’ll just tell me if I ask her, and I want to _know_.”

“Ugh, _fine_,” Jaime sighs. He puts on a big show of looking around and making sure no one’s watching him before he leans in and whispers, “Margaery Tyrell.”

Brienne’s eyes light up a little, and she laughs her loudest laugh. He shushes her desperately, reminding her that it’s supposed to be a secret. If Sansa realizes he betrayed her trust…

But Brienne just shakes her head and leans in.

“I was _just _talking to Ms. Tyrell about this yesterday. Apparently Margaery is _obsessed _with Sansa. She used that word exactly. She talks about her all the time. _Enormous _crush. Also she called me ‘swoonworthy’, apparently.”

“Well, first of all, that’s true,” Jaime says, kissing his wife, because he can. “Second, I _need _to tell Sansa.”

“No!” Brienne exclaims, grabbing Jaime’s arm to stop him from getting up, already laughing at him. “Jaime, no. They need to figure it out for themselves!”

Jaime looks at her incredulously. It’s funny that she would say _that_, of all things. And _here_, too. The literal exact same soccer field where she accidentally broke his heart _years _ago. If not for the intervention of Elia, they might have ended there. Where would he be now? Nowhere good, probably.

But he doesn’t need to bring that up. He can see in her expression that she knows exactly what he’s thinking about. She smiles a little, rueful and remembering, and she squeezes his knee.

“Yeah,” he says. “Exactly.”

He squirms out of her grasp, ignoring her laughing shouts for him to stop.

“Jaime, don’t be an idiot,” she yells.

“Sansa, come here a second!” Jaime says. “I have the _best _news.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew! Did it! Thank you everyone who read this, and I'm sorry I made you cry so much

**Author's Note:**

> My initial plan for this story was for it to be entirely from Brienne's POV and to have the fake dating thing be a ~reveal~ near the end of the work. But then I decided that it was much more fun to write both sides of oblivious pining, and besides, i really wanted to call it a Fake Dating AU and I can't really do that if I don't admit to the fake dating upfront.


End file.
